Labour’s wicked honesty,

Just a week ago Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary announced the government is planning to end their Early Release Scheme for prisoners. A reckless measure most the country neither agrees with nor understand but the government seems to think it is a viable method by which to rehabilitate the worst offenders. Dominic Grieve, the Shadow Justice Secretary welcomed the announcement in principle but with caution. He also – rightly – questioned the timing of ending the scheme (March 12) just weeks before the General Election.

Today (only a week later) the news is prisoners are being advised to apply for early release on a tag as usual. Mr. Grieve was right in cautioning last week that “as always with this government, you have to check the fine print”.

Clearly the announcement last Monday was made to bury bad news from the weekend, and today Labour was hoping nobody will notice them reengaging because everybody will be too busy untangling the ‘criminal’ crime figures from Mr. Brown’s speech this morning. But it didn’t quite work out that way did it!? It won’t be so bad if Labour was not so self righteous and always jumping in feet first in everything!