Labour packed full of shambolic third-raters making Britain as useless as them

Just what is happening to this country? Britain was always known as a fairly decent place: people were polite, reasonable and above all honest. But now? Recent reports have shown a massive increase in shoplifting - on an elegant street in my own little corner of civilised west London it is now common for shops to keep their doors locked.

It's commonplace to dodge train fares. Lying on CVs is a regular practice - I refer you to Rachel from Accounts. Cyclists have become homicidal maniacs, or so it seems when you see them hurtling towards you. I recently heard tell that in the past armed gang warfare, admittedly dreadful at any age, used to be between 17 and 18 year olds; it is now between 12 and 13-year-olds.

Everyone takes their children on holiday during term time, because air tickets to Disneyland are a bit cheaper then, and no one respects school rules. And so on.

William Hague got roundly abused when, back in the day, he said that Britain was becoming like a foreign country, but he was well ahead of the game.

When you walk down the UK's vandalised, graffiti-ridden streets without a copper in sight (and I am most emphatically not blaming them personally), reading about middle-class mothers banged up in prison for years at a stretch for unwise tweets, while we can't even deport serious criminals in our midst, you do have to wonder what on earth is going on.

Some of this is undoubtedly the huge numbers of people we have allowed into the country, from places where standards are not as high as our own. But a fish rots from the head down and it must be the total collapse in standards of public life that have wrought such havoc.

I wrote here last week about useless female Labour MPs, to which a fair few of you responded (no one disagreed), but actually that extends to Labour as a whole.

When they're not punching their constituents, they're busy trying to dismantle what they see as the last vestiges of the British Empire, all the while totally ignoring what anyone is actually worried about.

None could run a whelk stall, let alone take a place at the high table at All Souls College, Oxford. They're shambolic third-raters and we see their malign influence in every single aspect of life today.