Dan Hamilton's great post earlier raises many issues well worth further discussion, but one I want to touch on is the question of optimism. Dan explains that his own led him to be wary of arguments that Britain's society is broken.
For me, optimism has always led me to precisely the opposite conclusion - that the current state of affairs is not good enough and really can be improved. It's very important that those of us who acknowledge major social problems refuse to concede to the other side that they alone have a positive outlook for the future. The idea that the intimidation and misery inflicted by yob culture and barely punished criminality is not really a problem to be dealt with, or is an intrinsic part of the modern world, is a counsel of despair. It is those of us who believe things can be better, as they have been, who are the true optimists.
We are also the realists, both in acknowledging an undeniable problem and in recognising that the solutions are there to be taken up by politicians. America's choice to reform welfare and massively expand her the prison population in the 1990s was ridiculously denounced at the time as the road to a Dickensian dystopia, but of course these policies slashed dependency, poverty and crime, benefiting most many of those who were once part of America's underclass.
The same can happen here. As Dan notes, Iain Duncan Smith more than anyone else is showing the way.