The Wire: is Speke really like Baltimore?

Loads of coverage today for Chris Grayling's talk about British inner cities and The Wire.

In case you missed it, the Tory shadow home secretary said that our inner cities - like Speke in Liverpool, and Moss Side in Manchester - are now like the most dangerous drug-dealing, gun-toting streets in Baltimore.

Here's Chris Grayling on More4News - and here's one of the more sensible reactions, from Michael White.

I won't get bogged down in a point-by-point rebuttal of Grayling's comments. But the following is probably a good summary: (1) It's August,and therefore open season for headline-grabbing speeches from politicians, (2) Baltimore's murder rate is far higher than Manchester's or Liverpool's, but has fallen sharply over the last decade, and (3) total crime levels in the Speke area have fallen over the last year.

I did just want to share one story with you...

In 2002, I took newly-elected MP David Miliband round Baltimore - and introduced him to then-mayor Martin O'Malley - who is now Governor of Maryland. O'Malley had just set up CitiStat - an award-winning programme, based on the CompStat model pioneered by Mayor Giuliani in New York City. It measured and actually improved service delivery across the city. Sounds a bit dull, but it was instrumental in cleaning up the city, reducing crime, and yes - tackling drugs.

Shortly after, I took a team of Whitehall civil servants round Baltimore - including senior bods from the Treasury and the Prime Minister's Delivery Unit. They were all impressed by the CitiStat model - which helped cut violent crime by 40% during O'Malley's six years as mayor, and won Harvard's Innovations in American Government Award in 2004.

So although Baltimore might look like a bad model for UK cities, it does actually offer some lessons in tackling crime - and of course has a directly-elected mayor. Not all bad, then... 

PS Little-known fact = Grayling is the Shadow Minister for Liverpool. Apparently, lots of different Tory shadows each adopted a city back in 2006 - e.g. Alan Duncan is Shadow Minister for Newcastle, and George Osborne is Shadow Minister for Manchester. Currently, we have a batch of Regional Ministers - looks like these will be replaced by Cities Ministers, if the Tories win next year.