Last week, I took a drive around the north-east of England and what I saw horrified me

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As we head into an uncertain autumn and winter, one of them; Burnham, Farage or Badenoch needs to prove they can get a grip, writes GB News's Editorial Director

If ever there was a need for a country to be grabbed by the scruff of the neck and dragged into line, it is now.

GB News has never, and will never, deliberately talk down this wonderful country.

But this past week has made me and no doubt many of you scream in frustration at where we are heading unless someone cracks down soon.

The heartbreaking loss of two heroic police officers in a head-on smash with a car carrying five young men speeding on the A66 in Middlesbrough was just the beginning of Britain’s new nightmare.

What was a catastrophe for the families of PC Matthew Blades and PC Tom Clough has mushroomed further - exposing the rotten mass of criminality that lives underneath the surface in some of Britain’s towns and cities.

A criminal minority allowed to prosper among fearful, law abiding families in areas long abandoned by politicians too keen to pose on social media for likes than get their hands dirty where it matters.

We already thought we had enough worries with our borders seemingly open to any foreign criminal wanting a new life here.

But the alarming events triggered by that crash in the early hours of Saturday morning reminded us of the sinister homegrown threat that lurks within.

I grew up in the north-east of England in the 1980s and 90s.

Much of the area was in the process of being de-industrialised with mines and factories shutting across the region.

The villages and towns that once had been dominated by the pits and heavy industry were left overnight with no focal point for employment.

Last week I took a drive around some of those places - themselves just 15-20 miles up the coast from the scenes of death and disorder we’ve witnessed in horror this past week.

They never recovered, but the people were left to pick up the pieces themselves.

Rows of terraced houses, once full of proud, hard working, working class families, now falling apart.

High streets with most buildings boarded up with only vape shops and off licences still trading.

The good, honest majority trapped in those areas by economics scared to speak out, living in fear of the drug dealers and hooligans thriving among them.

Thriving, it has to be said, because the so-called authorities have been too scared to act.

It’s been easier for politicians and police to simply ignore places like this and those areas of Teesside that we’ve seen erupt this week.

GB News presenter Michelle Dewberry saw it at first hand in her home city too last week.

Sat for 20 minutes on an estate in Hull, she saw children whizzing by on dangerous, illegal bikes in full face balaclavas in two separate incidents.

There’s lawless estates and villages in Newcastle, Leeds, Glasgow, Liverpool and - yes Andy Burnham - Manchester too.

And don’t kid yourself, Wales, the Midlands and the South has them too.

Areas where criminals rule through fear and intimidation and the majority have to suffer in silence because there’s no way out.

Hooligans high on heroin and handouts taking precedence over the silent majority who just want a society where they get a fair chance in life.

The talking shop is open again with a new Prime Minister - so-called King Of The North - Andy Burnham facing proper scrutiny for the first time.

We’d been led to believe the ‘King’ had solved 'the North’s’ problems.

Getting some trams to arrive on time in Manchester is not a blueprint for nationwide peace and harmony.

It certainly doesn’t stop your car being nicked from outside your house, being taken to a field by criminal numbskulls performing ‘doughnuts’ before they gleefully torch it on social media.

But whether Nigel Farage or Kemi Badenoch can prove they can be more effective than Burnham remains to be seen.

The increasingly irrelevant party conference season is about to start up with speech after speech from politicians telling us how they are the ones to grab our problems by the scruff of the neck.

But if their words are hollow and if they don’t back up them up with action then we are in trouble.

The news agenda will move on, but society’s ills will remain, ready to emerge again when we least expect.

From what I’ve seen of the messages to GB News from viewers and listeners this past week, you believe the time for talking is over.