Good to see David Cameron’s now customary fat-headed response to the issues of the day (in this case the Learco Chindamo affair) getting both barrels.

It’s just a shame that New Labour, still never knowlingly outflanked on the Right by anyone, weighed in with their own fatuous response. Jack Straw leapt aboard the bandwagon so nimbly you wonder if he missed his calling as an Olympic hurdler.

The thing is, with re-offending rates amongst Britain’s ex-prisoners astronomical, a more humane and thoughtful government (of whatever political stripe) would have taken the opposite tack.

By any measurement, Learco Chindamo is one of the success stories of the modern prison system. A violent murderer who entered prison 12 years ago ‘unable to read or spell his address when he started his sentence’, he has expressed remorse for his crime, gained GCSEs in maths, English and art and is described by the deputy governor of Ford prison as ‘a changed person who would prove himself worthy of trust’. Chindamo should be held up as an exemplar of what can happen when prison works as it should.

But no, the retributive flavour of the mix isn’t strong enough. We need a dash more. A ravening, spittle-flecked media, interested in nothing more than shifting product, yank on the politicians’ chains to get them to do the heavy lifting. Which they duly do for fear of slipping a few votes in the super-marginal constituencies. Why don’t we just do away with Parliament and have all decisions of importance made by a board consisting solely of newspaper proprietors? By which I mean, they make those decisions already but let’s have some transparency and stop insulting everyone’s intelligence, shall we?

The Home Office’s case against Chindamo seems to be that, ‘while it was unlikely that Chindamo would reoffend’, his very existence as a free man poses a risk to public safety as a third party might be tempted to have a pop at him. Using that logic, why aren’t all of Britain’s nonces under lock and key to protect them from fire bombs and poorly spelled placards? Why aren’t Chris Moyles, Alastair Campbell and Rebekah Wade in the pen?

It’s Chindamo’s ‘notoriety’ that marks him. But who stoked that notoriety, Chindamo himself? He seems to want to keep his head down, atone and reform. How about the likes of the hacks who chased him earlier this year when he was on day release? Or headline-starved MPs and their echo-chamber hangers-on?

In the middle sits Mrs Lawrence, yet another victim of the drive for newspaper sales and political populism. Neither of the parties pulling her this way and that give two shits about her grief or her dead husband. She’s not so much attempting to ride the raddled tiger as trying to fight off two at once while they attempt to have their filthy way with her. And they won’t phone in the morning.

Update: This is very good.