I cannot admit that I spoke to many voters in Brent. Most people I knocked on would not come to the door. The one voter I did manage to persuade to go to the polls went in a vile temper at the daily soap Downing Street served up instead of behaving decently. ‘Soaps’, he uttered through gritted teeth, could be watched enough on television already. Downing Street should stick to politics.

Whether Downing Street can start behaving properly is anybody’s guess. But voters also want a change in behaviour in their own locality and these they expect the Government to deliver.

Ask any group of electors what are the main issues which face the country and they will cite the war in Iraq, being made to use a transport system of which third world countries would be ashamed, and the failure to deliver on health and education.

Ask the question what are the main issues facing them and the list changes. Their replies begin to centre on the collapse of civility and common decencies which were a mark of this country fifty years ago. That language may not be used. But the yob, and the rise of the yob culture, certainly will be.

The roots of the present malaise are deeply imbedded in our culture. The long march to a peaceable kingdom was made under the guidance of the evangelical revival, which put the fear of God into most of us, and a discipline which the Labour Movement imposed on the members of its mutually owned welfare state.

The wonder is not that we are now so plagued with horrible behaviour. It is that the old decencies lasted for so long. It is the rubbishing of the country’s set of social virtues or common decencies which the electorate is deeply mourning. David Blunkett might not be popular with the judges. But he is one of the politicians who voters feel listen to them and then acts.

I remember only too well the point eight years ago when I realised that I and my constituents were being engulfed by a new politics – the politics of behaviour. A large group of very respectable pensioners described to me how young lads continuously ran across their bungalow roofs, tried to smash their windows, peed through their letterboxes and jump out of the dark to frighten them. At this point I knew what previously I had regarded as isolated incidents of unacceptable behaviour were in fact the new stuff of politics.

The day the vote was declared in Brent a gang of yobs were sentenced to record anti social behaviour orders. But it has taken two years to get that gang into court. One of the suggestions I make in Neighbours from Hell is for the police to have the powers of surrogate parents where parents cannot or won’t control their children. We need many more police and those police must have the powers of a football referee, to warn and then to punish immediately.

Holding the line is crucial in showing that yobbism doesn’t pay. But the new politics of behaviour has to centre on the central issue of what sort of people do we want our citizenry to be?

Part of the answer must be to give clear guidelines of what is expected. I suggest that our rights based welfare is replaced by one of contract. The contract will spell out not only what society shall provide, but also what kind of behaviour is expected in return. Those people charged with enforcing the rules in our society, the police, teachers, social workers and the like, will have their hand strengthened knowing that the vast majority of society wish them to enforce decent behaviour.

The contracts need to be extended to schools. The note of real optimism struck while writing Neighbours from Hell was the attitude of young people themselves. They wanted to shape their school contracts. They saw good citizenship in terms of the personal qualities each of us should hold. Likewise a contract which they had helped draw up was one which they believed they had a role of enforcing. In such circumstances they believed they had a right to exclude those pupils who were breaking the contract they had drawn up together.

Making politics centre on the type of people we want our citizens to become is long-term stuff. But despite all the bitter disappointments of recent years I find voters only too willing to forgive if they feel that their politicians are trying. A policy of holding the line more effectively against the yobs, while showing that long-term reforms were beginning to be rolled out, might begin to repair the damage. If this fails then a Tory win on a record low turnout cannot now be automatically ruled out of court.

Neighbours from Hell: The Politics of Behaviour is published by Politicos at £8.99.