Jack Straw: spare the rod, spoil the vote
Wow. A welcome moment of clarity from Jack Straw:
Straw will challenge the “arms industry lobby” to do more to put victims at the heart of their work, to recognise that being a victim of war is one of the most traumatic things that can happen. He will suggest that the victims’ commissioner will give victims of war a stronger voice in government and in the community.
No, sorry, that’s not right.
Straw will challenge the “the gas and electricity lobby” to do more to put consumers at the heart of their work, to recognise that being a victim of high prices is one of the most traumatic things that can happen. He will suggest that the victims’ commissioner will give victims of high prices a stronger voice in government and in the community.
Nope, that’s not it either.
Straw will challenge the “criminal justice lobby” to do more to put victims at the heart of their work, to recognise that being a victim of crime is one of the most traumatic things that can happen. He will suggest that the victims’ commissioner will give victims of crime a stronger voice in government and in the community.
Ah, that’s better. It’s all about who’s lobbying and what they’re lobbying for. You can pretty much forget it if you’re stupid enough to put a little basic humanity at the heart of your pitch. I wonder how many nice lunches the ‘criminal justice lobby’ have bought for Jack. Not enough, probably.
The thing is, Jack’s feeling a little randy right now and what is more sexy than rubbing one’s petty prejudices up against those of tabloid newspaper editors? It’s hot rhetorical frottage action.
And yet this is an issue where two massive priorities of the likes of Daily Mail readers smash together: the need to be teeth-baringly vindictive versus claw-handed penny pinching. Re-offending costs the UK somewhere in the region of £13 billion a year. There are very good reasons to believe that a more humane prison system – better rehabilitation, improved diets etc. – would go a long way to reducing that figure and yet Straw wants to appeal to our anger rather than our greed.
It’s very New Labour though, that double standard. They like their proles angry and their patrons and oligarchs greedy. And the history of the New Labour movement is littered with sagas of billions squirted up the wall in the name of buffing egos and quick, cheap headlines.
It’s also about resource management. Straw’s looking for a fuel to power his journey to the top. Prisoners and their advocates are a natural resource that people don’t mind seeing exploited. It’s the same with refugees, hence Immigration minister Phil Woolas stuffing them into his tank to fuel his political journey ever-rightwards. And there’s Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell filling up on Four Star sofa-bound dossers. All these groups come cheap, and offer a seemingly inexhaustible energy supply. The emissions are pretty poisonous but then we’re all holding our noses.
Posted on October 27th, 2008 at 9:01am under New Labour
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• 5 Comments |
Excellent opening to the post!
It seems perfectly possible to me to both create a humane prison system and an efficient, open and straightforward legal system AND adequately take into account the victims of crime.**
Anyone who’s spent any time observing the system at work knows that it is largely a game played out by lawyers, police, magistrates and judges in the often cynical and jaded atmosphere of our courts, with little reference to ‘justice’, the consequences for the convicted (or for the society he ultimately rejoins) or the feelings of the victims.
**It goes without saying, of course, that Straw has no intention of doing that.
They’re doing it again ! And you fall for it every time. Straw has (alas) zero intention of actually doing anything – I think we share that bit of the diagnosis.
Like Churchill, who rebranded the WW2 “Communal Feeding Centres” as “British Restaurants” with the words “everyone associates the word restaurant with a good meal, and they may as well have the name if they cannot have anything else”, Straw is continuing the grand Nu Lab tradition of talking tough and doing damn-all. Hence the 1,583 “crackdowns” and “blitzes” we’ve seen over the last eleven years. I think the nautical term is “he’s making smoke”.
But when you say “Prisoners and their advocates are a natural resource that people don’t mind seeing exploited” you need to discriminate between people who count and people who don’t. The people who count care deeply about prisoners.
I’ll always remember David Blunkett, master of the strong soundbite, on the suicide of Harold Shipman :
“You wake up and you receive a phone call telling you that Shipman has topped himself. And you think, is it too early to open a bottle?
“Then you discover that everybody’s really upset that he’s done it. So you have to be very cautious in this job, very careful.”
The “everybody” – the people who administer and make a living from the criminal justice system – are the people who count. The people who don’t, as I’m sure you’d agree, are the punitive morons led by the nose by the Sun and the Mail.
Labour have obviously decided that now is the time to go for the Daily Mail vote as they make a recovery in the polls. I doubt those on the Left will be very impressed, but this obviously wasn’t meant to appeal to them.
http://lettersfromatory.wordpress.com
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