Dear Prime Minister

Please forgive me for not addressing you by name but at the time of drafting this, the election results had not been announced and I didn’t want to presume, writes Graham Bartlett.

Congratulations on being appointed and, whichever party you are from, I wish you well. I thought I might take this opportunity to suggest an approach for you to consider while in office, especially if you are serious about making the UK a better and fairer place.

Firstly, from the moment the King asked you to form a government, this ceased to be about you. Neither is it about your party, cronies, sponsors or any other group with whom you are associated. It’s not even just about those who voted for you. It is about the whole country and wider world. We have seen what damage the opposite approach brings and you have a chance to change that.

The UK has become a divided country, split on grounds of privilege, race, gender, ability, wealth, language, religion, sexual orientation and much more. This produces dire inequalities which lead to hate and mistrust. You can do something about that by ensuring that every syllable spoken, policy produced and law enacted by government recognises how, together, we can make the country infinitely stronger.

The fixation with punitive criminal justice policies accepts defeat. It takes crime as being inevitable and that the only solution is locking people up longer, even for non-violent low level offences. You may wish to invest in bolder ambitions that tackle why people offend in the first place, rather than the outcome. These can be addiction, low education, poor parenting, mental health, poverty, peer pressure, exploitation, insecure or substandard housing, unemployment, among others. It is within your gift you grip those and you have five years to make a start. You won’t turn the oil tanker overnight, but when it does change course we will be heading for a much brighter place.

The nation is sick and the NHS is in intensive care. The staff who work day in and day out are run off their feet, trying to make the best of a very bad job, being forced to wear fake smiles. Waiting lists, patients in corridors, bed blocking all need investment to resolve and not just in hospitals but in the community and care sector. Because doctors and nurses rarely complain, they are demonised when they take action; action that is necessary because all that clapping on Thursday evenings somehow didn’t generate the funding they urgently needed. Who would have guessed?

We used to say that young people are our future but with child poverty, safeguarding and youth-related crime being epidemic, they are very much our present. The African proverb that “it takes a village to raise a child” could not be truer. You are now the chief of this “village” so it is within your gift to focus education, social care, the voluntary sector and, above all, parenting, on raising and nurturing children to be the very best citizens they can be. That is not counted in units of qualifications or earning potential, neither is it signified by sporting trophies and accolades. It’s defined by kindness, empathy, a strong work ethic, open-mindedness and positivity. There used to be a motto of “every child matters”. You could bring that back and apply it departmentally, holding ministers to account for its implementation.

I could go on and on, but my final point is migration. We hear about “the small boats” as if they are a hostile force crossing the Channel to attack us. You could change the narrative around these desperate people who are fleeing something so terrifying that surrendering themselves and their families to the perils of the ocean in woefully unseaworthy craft is more preferable. You could find global solutions to the phenomenon of people fleeing conflict and drought, rather than demonising the victims. How would you feel if the boot were on the other foot?

Prime Minister, you have time on your side and power in your armoury. Let history define you as a leader who, while you might not get everything right, demonstrated integrity, humanity, wisdom and strength, not just another narcissistic party-puppet whose sole goal is self-aggrandisement to the detriment of others.

Good luck. We will all be watching.

Former Brighton and Hove police chief Graham Bartlett’s Jo Howe crime novel series continues with City on Fire which was published in March