‘There’s a lot of societal issues in Ely,’ said an anonymous caller to BBC Radio Wales the morning after the recent riots in that Cardiff suburb. ‘Motorbikes going up and down constantly. Open drug-dealing going on in broad daylight, that the police are aware of, and nothing gets done about it. Children in Ely – dare I say it? – probably don’t have aspirations. They only see what’s around them. There are young children going to school wearing Rolexes and rolling around on £6,000 e-bikes that their parents haven’t bought for them. So where’s the money coming from? There’s so many things at play that it’s shocking… things will start coming to the surface that would make a lot of people on both sides of the fence hang their heads in shame.’

It takes a riot for us to show much interest in a place such as Ely. It’s one of the many parts of the country that politicians of all parties prefer to ignore. Labour has run Wales for almost 25 years and doesn’t relish answering questions about sink schools or failing social services. The Tories are now presiding over the type of welfare dysfunction they were once dedicated to fixing. It’s easier for all sides just to ignore it.

Ely is described as a ‘closely knit community’ which is, all too often, a euphemism for a welfare ghetto whose residents have been betrayed by economic, policing and educational failures. The testimony of an anonymous caller to a radio phone-in is one of the few insights available into a growing social malaise that deserves at least as much attention as Suella Braverman’s speeding fine or the latest version of Boris Johnson’s lockdown transgressions.

On Monday, two young boys on an e-bike were killed in Ely. Initial reports said that Kyrees Sullivan, 16, and Harvey Evans, 15, were being chased by the police. The police denied this, saying the fatal accident happened before officers arrived at the scene. Then some camera footage emerged that did appear to show pursuit. The details of what exactly happened are in doubt, but other facts about Ely are not.

Some 46 per cent of adults in east Ely have no qualifications at all. Some two-thirds of children qualify as income-deprived. It has appalling rates of overcrowding in households. The level of welfare dependency is now worse than it was during the so-called Cardiff Ely bread riots of 1991, disturbances that stemmed from a trivial dispute between two shopkeepers over who could sell bread and other food products. Then, as now, the real story was social deprivation.

Britain is about 50 per cent richer than it was in 1991, but places such as Ely tend to be written out of the economic script. And for the same reasons: broken families and educational failure, followed by welfare dependency (38 per cent of working-age adults in the area are claiming out-of-work benefits) and a lack of social apparatus such as youth clubs. In such conditions, criminal gangs and drug-dealers move in. The police end up turning a blind eye and a feeling of lawlessness – as well as helplessness – sets in.

There is no political capital for Keir Starmer here. The fate of Wales is routinely used by Tories as a warning of what might happen to the whole country under Labour rule. The median waiting time for NHS treatment after referral is currently 14 weeks in England and 20 weeks in Wales. The mortality rate, too, is markedly higher. This is not a result of lower public spending – on the contrary, spending is 15 per cent higher per head in Wales than it is in England. So it is not a lack of funding that has resulted in inferior public services. It is the way in which that money is spent.

A sensible response from the Tories would be to offer to help. One of the unexpected dividends of Brexit is that UK internal market regulations now allow the government to step in directly, even in devolved areas. Michael Gove’s levelling up department is already offering help to rejuvenate his native Aberdeen, through a direct agreement with the council. Rishi Sunak could declare that, as Prime Minister of the UK, he very much cares about Ely, and that he stands ready to offer support.

It is just over 20 years since Iain Duncan Smith visited Easterhouse in Glasgow, an event that inspired the ‘Easterhouse agenda’ of welfare reform. This was hailed as one of the greatest postwar Tory achievements until its gains were eradicated by the disruption of the pandemic. Sunak could do a lot worse than to visit Ely and see what lessons can be drawn and what can be done to strengthen civil society – and then to assist those already attempting the hard work of social repair.

Doing all this would be a worthwhile use of post-Brexit powers. It might show that ‘levelling up’ is more than just a soundbite. Britain is now a devolved country; but one of Sunak’s jobs as Prime Minister is to prove that we are still very much a United Kingdom. In the aftermath of the riot in Ely, he has an ideal opportunity to do so.