Cressida Dick, one year into the job, could be forgiven a degree of exasperation that knife crime, an issue assumed to have been tackled — or at least contained — by her predecessors as commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, is making headlines once more. Fatal stabbings are at a nine-year high: there have been ten such murders in London in the past 17 days. Having confronted numerous terrorist plots, some of which came to shocking fruition, Ms Dick is now forced to address the re-emergence of a more prosaic yet equally destructive form of violence.

The fact is that a growing proportion of young people, particularly in the capital city, are once again choosing to arm themselves with a deadly weapon. In all too many