Another day and another Tory is talking Britain down

Another day and another Tory is talking Britain down. This time it is the man who wants to be Britain's Home Secretary.This morning the Shadow Home Secretary compared Britain’s streets to the blood-drenched streets of a city in an American TV programme, in which hundreds of people are shot and killed every year. It’s not the first time Chris Grayling, the Shadow Home Secretary, has used sensationalist comparisons with TV programmes to get his name in the papers. He’s already dismissed half of Britain for belonging to a Jeremy Kyle culture or a Shameless society. But this time his sensationalism is not just misleading – it’s dangerous.Gun crime is a serious issue that needs to be tackled soberly – to make policy based on sensation is reckless. If Chris Grayling was serious about gun crime, why did he and the Tories not vote for ma ndatory sentences for handling guns?Instead of talking Britain down, Labour believes that there is nothing that is broken in our society that cannot be fixed. Take Moss Side - one of the places Chris Grayling writes off: recorded crime is actually down in Greater Manchester, and youngsters on Moss Side estate are now also benefiting from Manchester Academy, which got rated outstanding by OfSTED this year.That is how we get crime down and build a better Britain – not by using the kind of unhelpful language that Detective Superintendent Darren Shenton, who heads Greater Manchester Police's Xcalibre anti-gang crime unit, has called “really sensationalistic”. I’m proud of Britain’s towns and cities - and I'm serious about tackling gun crime. If David Cameron is too then he should force Chris Grayling to apologise.Yours, Jack Straw