Until well into the 1980s, the death penalty was a problem for aspiring Tory candidates. Local associations were almost always in favour, strongly. This led to much wrestling with conscience. Conscience often lost. Matters were easier for card-carrying intellectuals. Any constituency prepared to consider one of them had already braced itself for bizarre opinions. But it would have been unwise for a beef-faced squire to declare his opposition to hanging. His audience would have assumed that he had a host of other suspect tastes.
Even as recently as the mid-1990s, Shaun Woodward felt it necessary to tell the Tories of West Oxfordshire that he was a hanger. Mr Woodward, a card-carrying pseudo-intellectual who subsequently defected to Labour, and invisibility, was hoping to take over Douglas Hurd’s seat. He succeeded, but not because of the death penalty. That cost him at least one vote. Judy Hurd, Douglas’s wife, might have forgiven him if she had believed him. As it was, she had two objections. She did not like being lied to. Nor did she respect the political judgment of anyone who thought it useful to lie on such a subject, to constituents who had come to revere Douglas Hurd, an unswerving anti-hanger.
Since Mr Woodward’s betise, the debate has moved on. David Davis was asked a question. As he supports capital punishment, he said so: no dishonesty there. In the House of Commons, the death penalty has always been a matter for individual judgment. Mr Davis made it clear that his was a personal opinion and unlikely to prevail.
David Davis was speaking during the Soham trial. The murder of children is always likely to inflame the public mood. Yet this did not work in Mr Davis’s favour. There has been a widespread impression that he went too far.
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