May To Hold Summit On Gang Culture

Theresa May, home secretary, is to host an international summit on how the country should deal with gangs, as part of the government’s response to last month’s riots.












Ms May, who appeared in front of MPs at the home affairs select committee on Thursday, conceded that only about a quarter of those involved in the violence in August are now thought to have had gang affiliations – fewer than thought. However, she said it was still vital to bring the problem under control.

“We are looking as widely as possible at what has worked [elsewhere] to make sure that what has worked is put in process,” Ms May said.

The home secretary reiterated that the government will also be canvassing the views of organisers of successful gang projects in the UK, such as the Strathclyde police scheme in Glasgow and another council-funded initiative in Waltham Forest, north London.

The prime minister has already announced that Bill Bratton, former chief of both New York and Los Angeles police departments, will be flying to the UK to give advice at the event in October.

However David Lammy, Labour MP for Tottenham – the borough in which the rioting started after the fatal police shooting of local resident Mark Duggan – suggested the focus should be on reassuring communities that the police would be able to restrain criminals more effectively in the future.

“We must never, ever allow criminals and gang members to run the streets,” he told the committee in an impassioned outburst. “The advances in community policing were important, but it needed to go further.”

Mr Lammy said he had concerns about Operation Trident, the Metropolitan Police’s campaign to reduce gun crime in the black community, which organised the operation when Mr Duggan was shot.

“When police come in from outside the borough, things can go wrong,” Mr Lammy said.

The MP added that he had seen evidence that riot perpetrators had been inciting violence on BlackBerry Messenger days before the disorder in Tottenham began. “I am deeply worried that the police seemed unaware of these networks,” Mr Lammy told the committee.

Separately, in a speech at the children’s charity Barnardo’s, Sadiq Khan, shadow justice secretary, castigated Ken Clarke, justice secretary, for making “simplistic assertions” when he called rioters a “feral underclass”.

“This kind of language absolves people from responsibility for their actions, implying that somehow they had no self-control or no choice,” Mr Khan said.

“Instead we will be looking at how we can make young people responsible citizens who understand the consequences of their actions and have the opportunities and the means to stay away from crime.”

Darling: EU Must Get A Grip On Greece

The European Union must "get a grip" of Greece's economic woes before the contagion spreads, ex-chancellor Alistair Darling has said.

In a gloomy assessment of Europe's economic prospects, Mr Darling told Sky News the EU had to find a solution to the problems in Greece.

He warned a failure to tackle the problem would have a "damaging impact" on European banks and governments.

"That's why the EU has got to be realistic and at long last do something that actually fixes the problem and not this series of short-term fixes that keep failing, that keep coming back," he told Jeff Randall Live.

"This is what they've been doing now for the last 18 months and it doesn't work."

Mr Darling offered the pessimistic analysis of EU economies in an interview also critical of former prime ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.











Economic troubles provoked clashes on the streets of Greece.

He was speaking in advance of the publication of Back From The Brink, a memoir of his time as chancellor during the financial crisis.

The former chancellor said he had to elaborate on his fraught relationships within the government in order to tell the story of the turmoil that engulfed the markets in 2008.

He said Mr Blair and Mr Brown had been allowed to assume too much control.

"In the 1990s, we were happy in some ways to let Tony and Gordon run the show - it wasn't quite a dictatorship - they made the changes Labour was desperately needing to make but hadn't done so.

"The problem was the decision-making became increasingly centralised," he said, adding policies on tuition fees and the economy would have benefited from wider debate.

"Collective discussion, the benefit of getting a combined wisdom, is I think something we didn't pay enough attention to," he added.











The ex-chancellor explained his criticism of Gordon Brown.

Asked if Ed Balls was among those who unleashed the "forces of hell" in negative briefings about him during the financial crisis, Mr Darling refused to attack his Labour colleague.

He said he backed the whole Labour front-bench, including the shadow chancellor.

Mr Darling said he acknowledged Labour did not always get it right in government and expressed regret more had not been done to fully implement welfare reform.

He cited the minimum wage as one of his party's greatest achievements.

An MP since 1987, Mr Darling was chancellor between 2007-2010 and also served as secretary of state for work and pensions, transport and trade and industry.

His outspoken remarks since leaving office are considered to be a contrast to the more low-key style he adopted in government.

Alistair Darling: I Should Have Done More To Force Gordon Brown Out Of Office

Alistair Darling has admitted that he should have done more to force Gordon Brown from Downing Street, and accused the former prime minister of presiding over a government which had a “permanent air of chaos and crisis”.











The former chancellor said that Labour would have had a chance of “getting through” the financial crisis if Gordon Brown had been more honest about the scale of the problem and agreed to announce more cuts ahead of the election.

Promoting his memoirs he said that he, and other Labour Cabinet ministers, should have done “something” about Mr Brown.

But the Conservatives seized on Mr Darling’s comments that Labour did not have a credible economic policy before the election, pointing out that Ed Miliband and Ed Balls are still backing the “Darling plan.”

Mr Darling’s withering criticism of the former prime minister is contained in his new book which is published this week. He describes how the two men – formerly very close political and personal friends, fell out badly over how to react to the 2008 financial crisis and its aftermath.

And he indicates that Labour would have done better at last year’s election if they had followed a more realistic plan to tackle the record deficit.

He told the BBC: “What it boils down to is, we could have got through this, there was a political way through it - actually we did get some kudos from the way we managed to stop the banking system from collapsing.

“We could have dealt with the recession, but the end point was, we then had to say having done all this, you had to get your borrowing back down without the problem - which frankly I think is the current Government's policy - which seems to be to squeeze the life out of the economy.

“We could have got through this. We didn't - because of the disagreement at the very top.

“The relationship between me and Gordon got progressively more difficult. We had a fundamental disagreement in 2008 as to how bad this was going to be, and then during 2009 we had this whole argument about what you do about the deficit.”

Such was the turmoil and lack of agreement between No10 and the Treasury over Budget measures, Mr Darling describes how he was forced to write parts of the speech “literally until the last minute.”

He added: “If you don't have a credible economic policy, you are simply not at the races, and our problem was it was so blindingly obvious to the outside world that the two of us, Gordon and myself, were at odds, that it really hampered us when it came to the election of 2010.”

Michael Fallon, the Conservative Party deputy chairman, sought to link Mr Darling’s disclosures with Labour’s current economic policy.

He said: “Alistair Darling has now admitted that Labour did not have a credible economic policy last year because they refused to say what spending they would cut.

“Yet Gordon Brown's protege Ed Balls is still in denial by sticking to the same course of more spending and more borrowing. And it's extraordinary that Ed Balls was putting political plotting ahead of the national interest in the middle of an economic crisis.

“This shows why Labour should never trusted with the keys to our economy ever again.”

Mr Darling admits that he held talks with David Miliband, who was considered the front-runner to replace Mr Brown, about forcing the prime minister from office. However, both men decided not to move against Mr Brown.

He admitted that had probably been a mistake and he and fellow Labour ministers should have acted.

Asked if senior politicians should have done more about Brown's leadership, he said: "If you want to criticise us collectively, perhaps we should have done something [about Brown].”

Mr Darling said he was “marked” by the reaction of Mr Brown and his allies after he gave an interview in which he described the crisis as likely to be the worst to hit Britain “for 60 years.”