Where are the police? Where are the safe streets? Where are the supposed decreases in violent crime? Where are the councils and the so-called tough ASBO measures? Where are the promised prisons?

The Popular Alliance ask a simple question:

Why did this young man have to lose his life Mr Blair?

Another innocent victim has lost his life because he was let down by the Government, let down by soft Judges, let down by soft police Chief Constables who would rather collect motoring offence fines, let down by local authorities and let down by mismanagement.

Soft on crime politically correct do-gooders do not want young offenders locked up but prefer to have them “tagged” or sent to cushy and expensive “rehabilitation” schemes where they are spoken to softly and gently, treated with kid gloves and told they have “rights” and its not their fault they are committing crime.

Yet a father, who was shot dead outside his home after confronting youths, had been stabbed in a similar incident six months earlier, the Old Bailey heard.

No one was apprehended over the stabbing on 21 January, it has been said.

Peter Woodhams, 22, of Canning Town, died in the "final chapter" of a campaign of violence and bullying against his family, the court was told.

He was shot four times by Bradley Tucker, 18, in August, it was alleged. Mr Tucker, of Canning Town, and a youth aged 17, said to have been a lookout, both deny murder and firearms offences.

The older teenager has admitted manslaughter, but the Crown did not accept his plea, the jury was told.

It is amazing that after nearly 30 years of trying the politically correct approach of being soft on crime by successive governments, this New Labour government is still trying to push the merits of defending the criminal and punishing the victims.

Surely it is now time to stop all the weird and wonderful experiments, stop listening to the loonies and crackpots and fringe think tanks, get rid of the appeasing left liberal judges, make the police go in and take the scum off the streets and punish them severely, very severely, with long sentences, life sentences that mean life.

It is time to hold a referendum on capital punishment, put some real fear back into the lowlife and criminal trash that has been allowed to breed uncontrolled over the last 30 years, and if the referendum returns a positive vote, capital punishment should be introduced without delay.

The fear of being sentenced to death by hanging should reduce violent crime considerably, once the reality dawns on the perpetrators of violent crime.

Innocent lives must be protected at all costs and if more prisons need to be built to allow realistic sentences for lesser crimes, they must be built to enable the police to carry out their community responsibilities.