The death of the high-trust society

Should we resign ourselves to armed police at Christmas markets?

There are many wholesome images we associate with the season of goodwill: trees bedecked with tinsel and baubles, elves distributing candy canes and enticingly-wrapped gifts, Mariah Carey frolicking in the snow with that corpulent fellow in a fake beard. And now we might also add to that list anti-terror crash-barriers and armed police at festive markets. God bless us every one.

Frustrations are running especially high due to the reluctance of our law enforcement agencies to be honest about the issue. On Tuesday, Surrey Police posted the following on X:

“Whilst you are out and about at events across Surrey in the festive period, you may see some armed police presence. We appreciate that this can be an alarming sight, which is why we wanted to take the time to reassure you that these are part of routine foot patrols to deter serious criminality and not in response to any particular threat.”

It’s not difficult to detect the unsaid words screaming through this mealy-mouthed boilerplate. There has been a radical shift in recent years which has meant that public events now require a perimeter of what some are sarcastically calling “diversity barriers”. These huge steel bollards and barriers are designed to prevent a repeat of the appalling atrocity in Nice in July 2016, when a Tunisian jihadist ploughed through crowds of families on Bastille Day in a truck, killing 86 and injuring a further 434. For the police to claim that there is no “particular threat” is unlikely to be believed by anyone with a memory more far-reaching than your average goldfish.

Back in November, Manchester City Centre Police posted a similar statement:

There is something undeniably incongruous about the sight of happy-go-lucky police officers patrolling with lethal weapons at Christmas as though it were the most unremarkable thing in the world.

Is this the “new normal”? Has the very concept of the high-trust society depleted to such an extent that a visit to Santa’s grotto must now be supervised by uniformed men with machine guns? London mayor Sadiq Khan famously claimed that terrorist attacks are simply “part and parcel of living in a big city”. He may not have said it with a shrug, but a shrug was most definitely implied.