The toll from knife crime and gang violence continues its remorseless rise. At the weekend, a 16-year-old boy died in Coventry from stab wounds and a man in his twenties was fatally stabbed in north London.

Last week, a police officer put her helmet above the parapet on this issue. Jackie Sebire, assistant chief constable for Bedfordshire who leads on serious violence for the National Police Chiefs’ Council, said some young people who lacked the “protective factor” of a father figure looked up to drug dealers and gangsters instead.

“We don’t talk enough” about this, she said, because it is “too easy” to blame police cuts, social media and drugs instead.

She’s right on both counts. Of course, many factors contribute to crime; its