Peter Hitchens on the Abject Failure of Britain's Welfare State

Police water cannon and plastic bullets? After 50 years of the most lavish welfare state on earth? What an abject failure

" Bitter laughter is my main response to the events of the past week. You are surprised by what has happened? Why? I have been saying for years that it was coming, and why it was coming, and what could be done to stop it.

"I have said it in books, in articles, over lunch and dinner tables with politicians whose lips curled with lofty contempt.

"So yes, I am deeply sorry for the innocent and gentle people who have lost lives, homes, businesses and security. Heaven knows I have argued for years for the measures that might have saved them.

"But I am not really very sorry for the elite liberal Londoners who have suddenly discovered what millions of others have lived with for decades.

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"As the polluted flood (it is not a tide; it will not go back down again) of spite, greed and violence washes on to their very doorsteps, well-off and influential Left-wingers at last meet the filthy thing they have created, and which they ignored when it did not affect them personally.

"No doubt they will find ways to save themselves. But they will not save the country. Because even now they will not admit that all their ideas are wrong, and that the policies of the past 50 years – the policies they love – have been a terrible mistake."