Nice idea, but ......

Shadow Home Secretary, Chris Grayling on fixing "broken Britain".

It's an appallingly badly written article full of "he will say" this and that - indicative of the poor quality hackery that passes for journalism these days - but the essential thrust of the message comes through.

The point Grayling misses, though, is an important one - adult and parental authority. The state - under both Tory and Labour administrations - has spent decades undermining parental and adult authority under the belief that would make society more child centred. As it turns out, that has had the opposite effect - as these things have a habit of doing - and our society has become less child friendly as adults, scared of using their authority for fear of being accused of child abuse, don't bother to get involved and leave kids to look out for themselves.

The trouble is, putting this right isn't a simple thing. You would need to overturn the whole liberal progressive orthodoxy to even begin to mend what is "broken" and there isn't the slightest indication that Grayling or anyone else in the Tories is prepared to do this.

You need traditional families in which the traditional roles are established. Yes, this means stay at home mums and dads who go to work. It may upset the feministas, but it's a proven method of establishing a societal base in which children have suitable role models. You need to re-establish adult authority in our classrooms and roll back the feminisation of basic education -they need proper order and discipline.

You need to re-establish a moral baseline which we can agree is the minimum standard of moral behaviour - and this means re-establishing traditional Christian morality. We've tried the secular method - and it didn't work. The schools might be calling for less faith in the classroom and the scrapping of Christian assemblies, but we actually need more and for that faith to be Christian. This doesn't mean everyone has to believe in God or be a "Christian" - just that they understand what is and isn't Christian behaviour. Yes, I know many atheists believe they do - but they aren't 11 years old and it's my belief that the vast majority of adult atheists learned their morality through Christianity in school. Most kids today do not.

You have to re-establish the rule of law by making immoral and illegal behaviour socially unacceptable - and this includes drug-taking. At the moment it isn't just socially acceptable, it is fashionable. Forget all the arguments about whether illegal drugs are harmful or not, that isn't the issue. The issue is the rule of law - either it applies or it doesn't.

You need to consider punishing the wrongdoer as being the first principle of law enforcement - not understanding them or rehabilitating them. Justice requires punishment. Prisons need to be austere places of fear and discipline for criminals - not holiday camps.

These are just a few of the things that the Tories would need to do to mend "broken Britain", but they are not prepared to do it. Instead, all they will do is implement more and more useless legislation which more and more people will ignore and things will get progressively worse.

It's a nice idea, but unless they are prepared to put their money where their mouth is then they have no chance of achieving it.