Evening Standard comment: Tough on knife crime, tough on its causes

Last night, two young men were stabbed to death within half a mile of each other in north London, the worst night for knife crime since New Year’s Eve, when four teenagers died. It is tragic.

One of the victims is the brother of an earlier young casualty. How have we come to this?

Part of the explanation lies in another story today about the extraordinary results from the latest police weapons sweep: the confiscated weapons include machetes, cleavers and hunting knives.

There are too many young men who carry knives by choice and they must be stopped.

Stopped and searched, in fact, for there is no substitute for this controversial policing method in preventing knife crime by seizing knives.

This has far too often been politicised; the Mayor’s reflexive approach is to blame government.

We need a sober approach which focuses on both the phenomenon of gang violence and knife use, and the reasons for them.

The Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, asks why young men make the life choices that end up with them carrying knives, for defence or aggression. But addressing that through education will take years.

The Mayor has usefully focused on youth services; he too is right that young people need alternative outlets for their loyalties.

But we need a solution for now, not only for the long term. And that requires families and neighbours to deal with knife crime by going to the police with the information they have.

The police can only do so much; they need communities to help and the Mayor, who takes pride in his community links, should encourage them to do so.

Short term, this is a matter of effective policing: stop and search is part of the answer, weapons sweeps are another. And visible policing helps.

On the 25th anniversary of the coining of the famous phrase, we need to find new ways to be tough on knife crime and tough on the causes of knife crime.

Welcome, Baroness Stowell

The MPs of the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee say Baroness Stowell of Beeston has the wrong background to chair the Charity Commission.

It is true that Tina Stowell did not go to Eton, unlike the previous Chair, Sir William Shawcross.

Instead, she went to Chilwell Comprehensive in Nottinghamshire.

It is true that Stowell did not go to Oxbridge, unlike the senior Conservative and Labour members of the committee.

In fact, she never went to university at all. She left school at 16 to go to secretarial college.

From there she rose to be a civil servant in Downing Street, helped run the BBC and got the House of Lords to back gay marriage.

It is true, as the MPs say, that she has not worked in one of the major charities — the same charities that are now subject to intense scrutiny as to why those who did work in some of them turned a blind eye to sexual harassment and worse.

Many would say that was a positive advantage for Baroness Stowell — just like her excellent predecessor, Sir William.

If ever the charity sector needed another strong-willed outsider to shine a spotlight on how they conduct themselves, it is now.

That is why the Government is right to ignore the MPs and appoint her.

Queen on the f’row

How many 92-year-olds go out of their way to do new things?

The Queen plainly has something in the nature of a royal bucket list, or so it seems from her appearance for the first time on the front row of London Fashion Week, next to a woman almost as regal as Her Majesty. Anna Wintour.

What an example to other nonagenarians.

Well done, Ma’am.