Where were the statesmen as London burned?

Over a scratchy line from an undisclosed holiday location, London mayor Boris Johnson managed just a few words.
He told the BBC that the fatal police shooting of a 29-year-old Tottenham resident and father-of-four was tragic, but it was no excuse for the violence and destruction that has reduced much of the North London town centre to a burned-out husk.


He was on the phone just long enough to get the victim Mark Duggan's name wrong, calling him Michael, before he rang off.
Johnson offered no assurance that he would return to be on hand during the violence which spread on Sunday, with skirmishes breaking out across the city overnight, in nearby Enfield, Hackney and Walthamstow, and in Brixton to the south, as Britain found itself bereft of elected leaders.
London burned and meanwhile prime minister David Cameron fiddled with the foil on a bottle of pinot grigio in Tuscany; deputy prime minister Nick Clegg quietly recovered at home from his getaway in sunny France; and chancellor of the exchequer George Osbourne remained ensconced at a hotel somewhere in Beverly Hills.
Britain's already shaky confidence in its leaders, several of whom have spent the summer trying to wriggle free of their association with the hacking scandal, will be further disturbed by the determination of the nation's powerbrokers to cling to the sun bed.
In the end it fell to Tottenham's own Labour MP David Lammy to act the statesman when he was greeted by press on Tottenham High Road, striking a balance between condemnations of the violence and searching for answers over its causes.
Police shot black minicab driver Mark Duggan in an apparent exchange of fire as they tried to arrest him on Friday evening. Members of the Independent Police Complaints Commission were on the scene quickly, and among the scant information released by police so far was that officers fired only after Duggan himself fired, apparently lodging a bullet in a radio strapped to one officer's chest.
However, late Sunday reports surfaced that an initial ballistic report shows that that bullet was police issue, casting doubt on whether Duggan fired, or even drew his weapon.
Mark Duggan's family members vehemently denied that Duggan was any gangster. Brother Shaun Hall said the idea his brother was stupid enough to shoot at police is "ridiculous". On Saturday afternoon the family took to the street to seek details about the shooting from police, staging a peaceful protest leading to Tottenham police station. After hours in the sun, the family went home without answers. Sometime later, protestors began bashing police cars left unmanned outside the station. As the sun set, the fires started – first police cars, then shops, and a double-decker bus. Looting, fighting and arrests followed.
A wider context for the riots, which have featured hundreds of teenagers, must include the impact of David Cameron's controversial austerity measures. Tottenham is among the communities worst affected by Cameron's budget, which drastically cuts programs for the young, poor and voteless. Funding has been cut from more than 380 youth charities across Britain, and Harringey Council, which covers four of the five riot areas so far, recently closed eight out of its 13 youth centres. The Harringey youth services budget was slashed by 75 per cent.
Tottenham's youth are on summer holidays, out on the street, and primed for the Metropolitan Police's reviled stop-and-search policy. Held as a cause for of the unrest in Brixton and Tottenham through the 1980s, the policy has long been thought to unfairly target minorities, and alienate the young.
Despite 2009 plans to heavily curb the practice, so-called stop and search and account regulations continue to give UK police the right to search anyone they suspect of holding drugs or weapons. And recent draft changes to the police and criminal evidence actwould reduce the responsibility of police to report its use.
Boris Johnson has hung his mayoralty on a commitment to reducing violent crime. It is the "but seriously folks" policy for the charming oaf who late last year managed to describe the hacking scandal as mere "codswallop".
But by literally phoning in his response to this weekend's riots, Johnson, along with much of the rest of Britain's leadership, betrayed a seriously flippant attitude to his constituency, the consequences of which await him when he finally returns from wherever he is topping up his alabaster tan.
Sam Bungey is a freelance journalist, currently living in London.