Andrew Gilligan, following his experience of being robbed in a Hackney street during the ongoing London riots, writing in today's Daily Telegraph:
Unlike Los Angeles or Paris, these riots are not happening in ghettos where nobody goes. They are happening amid the organic gastropubs and latte bars. Alongside poverty, inner London is full of the sort of middle-class progressives who agree with [former London Mayor] Ken Livingstone that the rioters "feel no one at the top of society, in government or City Hall, cares about them or speaks for them".
I predict a lot of those people, as they cower behind their sash windows, are revising their views tonight. The hardening of Liberal opinion in London is palpable, and is taking even the likes of [Mayor] Boris Johnson by surprise.
Presumably many Britons will reflect on these riots and end up feeling like they have, in the words of American "neocon" Irving Kristol, been "mugged by reality".
This is both understandable and disturbing (and nevermind Gilligan's unfortunate "ghettos where nobody goes" comment), partly because I have personally always felt that the UK - despite obvious problems - is representative of the very best a multi-cultural and multi-ethnic society can be, more tolerant than any other (including Scandinavia and the USA) and certainly as good a place as any to live as a multi-ethnic family.
I very much hope that these riots will not fundamentally alter this positive fact.
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