The coming months will reveal a myriad of opinions on why a proportion of England's youth erupted in a tragic frenzy of contagious violence and looting across our cities last week.

I hope that it is not too obvious an ‘after-the-event' statement to warn that, amid the finger-pointing which will accompany the socio-economic analyses, we must ensure Whitehall refocuses its over-stretched resources on a recently-neglected aspect of public policy – traditional ‘community cohesion'.