Event: British

Scapegoating social media for the crimes of repeat offenders lets the dysfunctional, inept British state off the hook. The head-on collision that killed seven people – including two police officers – on the A66 near Middlesbrough on the weekend was a tragedy in every sense of the word. It was also a tragedy that, from what we know, had an obvious cause: a car being driven at high speed in the early hours of the morning, down the wrong side of a dual carriageway, to avoid the police who were in pursuit. It is clear to everyone that those in the car, particularly the driver, were responsible for what happened. Unless you are a politician, that is. Because, as with every tragedy or baleful trend nowadays, the finger of blame has already been pointed at social media. In this case, TikTok has been deemed responsible for hosting videos that show dangerous driving. Speaking on BBC Radio 5 on Monday, UK defence secretary Luke Pollard demanded that social-media companies ‘step up’ and stop incentivising ‘people to generate such awful content’. ‘Social-media companies could take the content down easily and adjust their algorithms to stop it being distributed’, he said. Since then, the PM has waded in, branding social-media posts that celebrate joyriding as ‘truly reprehensible’. On that, most of us can agree. But is it really relevant to what happened on the A66 in the early hours of Saturday morning? The facts tell a different story. Shortly before 4am, Cleveland Police officers detected a car with cloned number plates. They pursued it for seven minutes before aborting the chase when the vehicle – a Volkswagen Passat – turned on to the wrong side of the dual carriageway. It continued to travel at high speed until it struck a police car travelling…