This is long, sorry but it's something I really care about...
County lines isn't just foreign criminal gangs. In some places it is a particular group running the street stuff and over the 2000s that started to be British-Pakistanis in some areas because during the Afghanistan war heroin became very cheap and poured through the pourous border into Pakistan and people with existing links to the region were best placed to take advantage of this. But that's only in some areas and for some types of drugs. In Scotland it's mostly white, Scottish crime families. In other parts of the UK it's British gangs with a mix of ethnicities including black/white. Sometimes it's Albanians. In NI it's split between Loyalist and Republican paramilitaries.
They all have links to foreign crime because it comes into the country from other places but at a higher level (not the visible street level) its different people. In the NorthWest the people on top are white British for example regardless of the lower levels.
The kids drawn into the county lines are usually from lower incomes and often a care background. In the North-East that might look like white children because of it's demographic makeup and history. In other places they might be young black children. They are all being exploited. They are also all being let down by the system.
But the people taking the drugs (especially the cocaine) are ordinary British people. The ones wringing their hands about crime/foreign gangs and then taking some cocaine on a night out are a big part of the fucking problem. No children would be being drawn into county lines if people weren't buying drugs. The continued blind eye to this is a culpability problem. This includes politicians and includes right wing politicians.
The problem is any suggestion of improving outcomes for children/intervening to get them out of that life annoys people because it's either seen as soft on yobs. Or it's handouts to the lazy etc etc. Yes there is ridiculous overspend in the care sector but that goes to private companies. When it suites working class children are innocent victims. But the same press/politicians will portray them as a feckless underclass on another day.
CSE is linked to this because often children drawn into transporting drugs or gangs are sexually exploited. And vice versa. Drug related crime always seems to link into the trafficking of children/vulnerable for sex as another revenue stream. Whilst 40% of grooming gangs in recent times were Asian (meaning South Asians were massively overrepresented compared to their size in the population) 60% Percent weren't. And historically it's been different groups (white gangs, black gangs etc) and the police turning a blind eye or viewing the children as consenting criminals. In some cases they were involved in the corruption.
Im not trying to argue that people shouldn't be angry at the Asian grooming gangs because of all the other people doing bad stuff. Part of the reason some people ignored it was a fear of encouraging racism. But in the case of the police/authorities it was mostly complicity and a long standing attitude towards working class children and children in care. Just focusing only on the race though pretty much ensures that none of the other problems will be fixed. And none of the difficult conversations had. Because even if every South Asian in the UK had disappeared in the year 2000 other people would have moved into the vacuum they left and been doing the exact same thing. And if people are only angry at foreign sex offenders and accepting of white ones then that means the problem will never get fixed. And I'm worried that's starting to happen to be honest especially as people become more tribal/polarised they become more likely to not deal with bad behaviour from people in their own groups.
So I can completely understand why someone in the NE would be voting Reform. I don't think they are bad people for doing so. But it still worries me a lot because I think the way they operate will make things worse, not better. Especially when dealing with county lines, child poverty and CSE.