Ken Clarke Is Right

Actually, Ken Clarke is one of the Good Tories. Indeed, one could spend some time speculating on how the Conservative party might have fared had it chosen him to lead it and not, say, Iain Duncan Smith. (Yes, there’s europe but…) Obviously then, this means some people think he personifies everything that is wrong with the Conservative party and never mind that he was a better Chancellor than anyone who’s held that job since.

And so Clarke is right to argue that we should probably send fewer people to prison and thus I disagree – respectfully! – with the Spectator’s editorial on the subject. This doesn’t mean – as the hang ’em and flog ’em brigade sometimes like to suggest – that we should’t send anyone to chokey but a re-evaluation of the utility of, in particular, short-term prison sentences would be more than useful.