Keir Starmer’s prisoner endorsement

Happy prisoner release day, one and all! Today’s move to let out the lags is all part of the Ministry of Justice’s efforts to ease the pressures on Britain’s overburdened prisons. To mark this auspicious occasion, hacks across the country have descended on various prisons to interview inmates being released to the outside world. And after doing time at His Majesty’s pleasure, the hardened ‘crims certainly seem to have a way with words…

Quote of the day surely has to go to the Daily Mail for this dispatch from HMP Isis, a Category C young offenders institution in Thamesmead. The paper writes evocatively that ‘as the sun rose in London today’ the first inmates to be released were ‘greeted by family members’. One of those, Djaber Benallaoua, 20, a convicted drug dealer, was asked how he felt. He declared the early release policy had made him a ‘lifelong Labour voter’, saying:

I thank Labour.