Boris and youth crime: bold plans and bogus pieties

Yesterday's launch by Boris Johnson of Time For Action, his proposals on youth and crime, showcased his vision and his myopia alike.

The document set out his desire to find ways of nipping teenage violence in the bud, steering young offenders towards paths of virtue and providing London's children and young people in general with valuable and fulfilling things to do. The attention he's giving to this issue has been widely welcomed, as proven by the many youth care professional and activists who made their way to a small community hall in Edmonton to hear him speak. But did he really know what he was talking about? I must confess to having moments of doubt.

The first came when I sat reading Time for Action's accompanying press release, in which were set out the mayor's main priorities. There was a pledge to crack down on school truancy and an unrepentant stress on the "character building" qualities of sport or being a member of the scouts or guides. "Healthy bodies lead to healthy minds," it said invoking the 19th-century public school spirit of Muscular Christianity with a gusto unusual for the modern age.

Does that mean it's past its sell-by date? Not necessarily by any means. Scouts, guides and sport are good things in the lives of an awful lot of children. But in terms of providing the moral boundaries and respect for themselves and others that the most wayward lack, are they the right remedies in every case? For some children, boys and girls alike, sport provides further reminders of their most painful inadequacies. The same can go for school. Why do kids bunk off in the first place?

Then came Johnson's speech. This was an intriguing mixture of liberal concern and bufferish harrumph. Afterwards, some of the youth workers I spoke to praised Johnson for his readiness to listen to them, and you could hear evidence of this in his recognition of the need to intervene – nasty socialist word, that – in the lives of troubled and troubling children in generous and creative ways.

Yet in a passage where he spoke about his own childhood he just couldn't resist invoking one of the profoundest idiocies of right-wing moral fantasy, the idea that children are no longer punished for doing wrong. It's not the first time I've heard him parrot this piece of tripe and makes me want to clip him round the ear.

Such stuff is, I suppose, only to be expected from a man who has said that he reveres Melanie Phillips and has recruited Anthony Browne as director of policy, but it damages his credibility.

Pity, that, because he and his deputy, Kit Malthouse, have some bold and realistic ideas. Their proposal to use young offenders' first time in custody as a chance to rehabilitate them psychologically, socially and educationally has great possibilities.

Time for Action also looks at ways to help children in care and acknowledges – as Johnson himself has in other settings – that artistic and intellectual exercise can be as character-building as running round a field. The youth strategy is still a work in progress. Keep listening to the right people, Boris, if you want it to succeed. Leave the others to their nostalgic pieties.