Tony Blair is fed up with yobbery, drunkenness and other forms of anti-social behaviour. “There’s a duty to respect the rights of those who live around you,” he said in an interview last week, promising early action in pursuit of this so-called “respect” agenda. In the next couple of days we will see the fruits of the prime minister’s resolve, with a raft of initiatives. Ministers will spread far and wide, visiting some of Britain’s anti-social behaviour blackspots to push the message that, as Mr Blair put it: “People who make life hell for others will be made to pay the price.”

There will be new enforcement powers including the right of the authorities to board up houses associated with persistent anti-social behaviour. There will be a National Parenting Academy to teach parents how to bring up their children and a new information programme through schools and youth services to push the acceptable behaviour message. Young people will be given things to do, through regional arts and sports bodies, and mentors will ensure that they keep out of mischief. A new truancy drive will be launched. The list of new and reheated measures goes on. None is bad in itself, although some smack of the nanny state at its worst. Students of new Labour are familiar with these barrages of initiatives, most of which tend to go nowhere.

The real problem, of course, is that the government’s belated attempts to get tough on anti-social behaviour sit uneasily alongside policies that have been demonstrably soft on the causes of it. Liberalising Britain’s drinking laws is not the obvious response to drunken yobbery on our streets. Our secondary schools, many of which are subject to persistent disruption from badly behaved pupils, have become breeding grounds for anti-social behaviour. Most of all, Labour has shown scant respect for the institution of marriage, seemingly doing its best to undermine it. Unstable family backgrounds breed anti-social behaviour. One day, perhaps, ministers will take themselves off to an academy to learn this.