I wasn’t too sure how to handle the news of the three motorway crashes that involved young criminals driving the wrong way on the M50 and M9 in Ireland and the A66 in England. The current fatality and injury count is, fatalities =7 (A66) and 5 (M9) and injuries = 4 (M9) and 9 (M50). Amongst those killed in the A66 crash were the two officers pictured above. I will not reproduce pictures of the perpetrators as this glorifies their actions to a certain group. What drew my attention to this tragedy was a comment by a young woman at a lawless vigil for one of the teenagers, Jakub Matusiak, where she said, “Jakub was a lovely, caring lad and he’s somebody’s son and somebody’s brother. He’s not some scumbag who should just be written off and forgotten,” she [also] said. “It was an accident that those police officers died.” The Times 24/08/26. I had two thoughts on her remarks. The first was my exasperation at her use of the word accident in describing the death of the two officers, PC’s Clough and Blades. This was not an accident. This was entirely foreseeable and it does not matter whether they had intended to kill the officers, they chose to act in a way that made it only a matter of time before something similar happened. It is as though they blindly fired into a crowd and said anyone killed or, injured was unlucky in that they were not targeted and therefore suffered by accident. I noticed that the Telegraph closed the comments section under one of its articles but most of the others were equally divided between calling the criminals scumbags or similar, and criticizing the Government and Police for inaction. I have some sympathy with this view as in nearly every region in England and Ireland there is a developing underclass who don’t buy in to the norms that the rest of the country live by. In Middlesbrough this is facilitated by a defeated police who were characterised as, “directionless, rudderless and clueless” Telegraph 29/08/26. They were also underfunded and overwhelmed. As for successive governments, they hoped that no bad publicity would happen on their watch and when it did, they applied sticking plaster and platitudes to the problem and hoped that it would go away.
If we return to my second thought on the comments made by the young woman, it is that looking for vengeance, however natural, is not going to solve the problem long term. Of course, she needs to realise that 12 people died and 13 were injured as a direct result of the actions of people like the one she described as lovely and caring. There seems to be a a disconnect between the actions of criminals and the impact on the community. In the case of the A66 criminals, ” Cahill had no previous convictions but the four others in the Passat had amassed 37 between them. Their offences included assaults on police officers, aggravated vehicle taking, knife possession and driving offences. The Times 28/08/26. Almost equal to the outrage concerning the Police and the Governments acquiescence to the situation, was the attack on the parents of the criminals. Information on the parents involved is very limited at this stage but the consensus from the posts on line, seems to be that they bear some responsibility for the action of their sons. In my view there is some evidence to support this but I believe there shouldn’t be a kneejerk reaction to blame all parents in all circumstances, just to satisfy our thirst for retribution. How many times have we thought, “there but the grace of God go I” when hearing about a loving family torn apart by a child who, perhaps is on drugs and beyond the parents control. Having said that, there are some who conform to the stereotype, “Cahill’s mother had encouraged people with vehicles to attend the tribute. …… she called for “bikes, jeeps, cars [and] quads” to gather to “give him [the] send-off he deserves”. Sunday Times 28/08/26 Predictably, the final send off involved, cars being driven dangerously, crashed and set on fire and horses were terrified, despite pleas from locals to stop. Probably in the minority, the mother of one of those killed in the M9 crash had a different view, “Speaking before the mass began, Jack’s mother Sarah told mourners that five young boys “made a bad choice” and paid the “ultimate price”. “we all want to send our deepest, heartfelt apologies to the families who were injured. You are all in our thoughts and our prayers” RTE 25/08/26. There but for the grace of God.
There have been the usual calls for longer sentences for these offenses, which will result in long sighs of resignation from front line officers who have to deal with these young men. They have heard it all before, when a government has had to face up to unwelcome reality. We all know that laws, by themselves, do not change anything without resolute enforcement and resources to back them up.
Our first and most important challenge is to recognise whether we have a problem or not.
It sounds very simple but we all avoid the causes of crime and only treat the symptoms. I have never experienced real poverty but when I look at the pictures of the sink estates in Middlesborough and I assume there are similar examples in Ireland, I think we have a big problem. I hasten to add that I am not going full Guardian on this but we are sleepwalking into a dystopian future. One mother of three summed up the situation on the ground, as follows, “There are kids aged five or six who will stand there in the street and tell you to f*** off if you cross them, they don’t care, they have no rules or guidance and the problem is that once you’re here you can’t get out. So they grow up to be criminals.” Times 28/08/26 This is a neat summary of the situation. To no rules, no guidance and no social mobility, we can add, no hope, no expectations, no sense of purpose. We can point to many reasons for this. At the age of 12 I had a newspaper round, every day, in all weathers, I delivered newspapers before school. Later I took a Saturday job and worked during the summer holidays. I am not sure that this would be possible today, with all the administration and child protection rules in force. The point is, that in addition to the exercise, I learnt the value of money, how to integrate into a workforce and could see a way of improving my situation. These are skills that are not taught in school, they are a portal into the academy of real life. The sad point is that we have managed to block that seamless entry point with well meaning regulation and a benefits system that is “exacerbating inactivity” The Times 11/06/26. Of course there are many other factors, schools, technology, porn, video games, drugs and alcohol, the disparagement of masculinity and so on. One of the major impacts on the future of our five year old, mentioned above, is the effect the benefits system has in maintaining the depressing and failing status quo. In the UK a report was commissioned to see what the actual outcomes were on the current unemployment benefit policy. The report was to determine, “whether the system offers social insurance to contributors who temporarily fall foul of the labour market or a permanent subsidy to an entrenched underclass.” The Times 11/06/26. What has prompted the governments action is the realisation that the underclass is going to expand expeditiously, unless the approaching NEET (not in education, employment or training) problem is solved. In Milburn’s interim report he cites some worrying numbers. He estimates that there are nearly one million NEETS in the UK in 2026 at an annual cumulative cost to taxpayers of £125 billion. The Times 28/05/26 In the first part of his report, Milburn finds that in the 16 – 24 age group of NEETS, 60% have never had a job in their lives! Starmer notes the failure of the Universities to provide courses suitable for post graduate employment by referencing that 1 in 10 NEETS are graduates. For the 2024/25 fiscal year, Milburn estimates that only £200m was spent on employment support programs for young people, out of a budget of £1.4 billion for total Job Centre spend for all ages. In Ireland and the UK there is one number that cannot be ignored, however much the respective governments try and that is the impact of immigration. In Ireland, for the period from January 2023 to March this year, only 26% of the 793,899 PPS numbers issued went to Irish nationals. There may be a number of reasons for this but I have not seen any discussion on the impact of immigrantion on the entry level job market.
I have spent some time looking at the context against which we should judge the recent crimes that destroyed so many lives. In summary, I think that there are two main approaches that need to be resolutely pursued. Yes, we should apply the rules and in my opinion, focus on the Rudy Giuliani ‘broken windows’ approach to policing. In certain areas the police have given up attending to what they describe as ‘minor offenses’. However, they are not ‘minor offenses’ to people, like the mother in Middlesbrough, who has to navigate them everyday. There are many people who live in dire conditions that are not criminals and we should not abandon them. Rightly or wrongly, there is a sense that the police have settled for an unwritten truce with the criminals that as long as they don’t make too much trouble, the guardians of the law will look the other way. If that seems unfair, how else do we explain the inactivity surrounding the grooming scandal? The second approach is far less focussed and the reason I touched on the Milburn report. The report illustrates the enormity of the cultural change that is necessary to prevent the same societal decline and decay that is evident in the sink estates in the UK and Ireland. For far too long the measure of success for a government is how much money is thrown at welfare recipients whilst presiding over a,” fragmented and hugely varied system for helping young people, with minimal monitoring or accountability.” The Guardian 28/05/26 The Milburn Report seems to be asking the right question, whether the billions poured into the welfare system, are producing an improved outcome. How is this related to the motorway deaths? This is as much a social, cultural and government problem as a criminal one. If we merely crack down on offenders, that just pushes them into more criminality and extremist action. The safety valve is to give our five year olds someone to look up to and something to strive for in a neighbourhood that has hope, expectations, and a sense of purpose. If we fail, the result is already with us. We can see a world where nihilism is the ruling culture. A resident at one of the ‘send offs’ for one of the criminals involved in the crashes made the case, “… they started crashing into each other, and I just thought, how stupid can you get? That’s how your friend died,” Sunday Times 28/08/26.
Sources
Sian Bradley and Kevin Donald, 24/08/26, The Times, A66 crash: hundreds gather at tense vigil as 12 are arrested, https://www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/article/a66-crash-mackay-saddington-bail-assaulting-police-officer-5kfbhpm9c
Marc O’Driscoll, 25/08/26, RTE, Mother of teenager killed in M9 crash apologises to victims at funeral, https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2026/0825/1589146-jack-kennedy-funeral/
Simon Heffer, 29/08/26, the Telegraph, Britain’s abandonment of the white working class is a recipe for anarchy, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/08/29/britain-abandoned-white-working-recipe-anarchy/
Sian Bradley, Ben Ellery, Eleanor Tait and Tash Mosheim, 28/08/26, The Sunday Times, Cars burn and 200 officers drafted to Middlesbrough as violence spreads, https://www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/article/middlesbrough-car-ramming-violence-fears-a66-crash-bmlr7cvtt
Sian Bradley, Ben Ellery, Eleanor Tait, 28/06/26, The Times, ‘It feels lawless’: inside Middlesbrough’s week of death and disorder, https://www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/article/it-feels-lawless-inside-middlesbroughs-week-of-death-and-disorder-kk86szp03
Cormac Lucey, 11/06/26,The Times, Neet solution to youth unemployment lies in welfare reform, https://www.thetimes.com/world/ireland-world/article/neet-solution-youth-unemployment-welfare-9x70sj87l
Ben Clatworthy and Daisy Eastlake, 28/05/26, The Times, Alan Milburn report: no Saturday jobs and job misery for ‘lost generation’, https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/alan-milburn-report-review-neets-key-takeaways-5k5t83wgt
Peter Walker, 28/05/26, The Gaurdian, A record of failure’: what’s in the first part of Alan Milburn’s Neet report https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/may/28/a-record-of-failure-whats-in-the-first-part-of-alan-milburns-neet-report
