Starmer’s (Hobson’s) choice

Glancing at FB this morning, I came across a photo of an airliner with the initials TWA prominently displayed. “The paint job on Keir Starmer’s personal jet is almost finished,” said the caption.

I’m not sure this is an appropriate way of expressing political criticism, but it did make me laugh. It also made me think about Sir Keir’s latest achievement, and especially his subsequent comments.

Some 1,700 prisoners received an early release last week, and most of them weren’t gentlemanly tax evaders. That number included drug dealers, robbers, burglars and even the odd killer.

Then the government passed a hasty ad hoc ruling that thousands more would continue to be released in the coming weeks because Britain can’t afford to keep them inside. Our prisons are so grossly overcrowded that they’ve run out of room.

By way of an interim decision, the government announced that henceforth prisoners would only have to serve 40 per cent of their sentences, not the customary 50 per cent we’ve learned to know and, in my case, hate.

The system of tariffs makes a mockery of justice, devaluing sentences and emboldening criminals. When an evildoer knows he’ll be out in half the time he is supposed to serve, he may be encouraged to try something on he would have eschewed otherwise.

Half the term means half the justice, half the punishment and – to appeal to every woke heart – half the rehabilitation. And 40 per cent of the term… well, you can do the maths.

Morally corrupt as that system is, it’s not the worst of it. Last week we were treated to the sickening spectacle of released convicts celebrating outside prison gates in the style of Grand Prix drivers. Bottles of champagne were popped, and crowds of meeters and greeters were doused with pricey booze.

Sir Keir didn’t like the show any more than I did: “Being forced to release people who should be in prison makes me angry,” he said.

But what’s a mother to do? “The choice was pretty simple. We’d got to the point where prisons were so full we had the choice between releasing people in the way that we’ve done it, or not being able to arrest people and put them in prison.” 

And then: “No prime minister should be in that position.” There’s one thing our PM got right.

To be fair, Starmer then made some vague noises about how building more prisons would be the way out of that Hobson’s choice. Yet nothing concrete has been announced. All we’ve learned for sure is that Sir Keir is unhappy about the situation, and it’s all the Tories’ fault.

Some of it doubtless is. However, forgetting partisan squabbles for a second, the problem is more fundamental than the diminishing differences between the main parties. All such parties, along with the governments they form, have lost sight of what governments are for.

Last week, Mario Draghi issued a report calling for an increase of productivity across Europe, and any sensible person should welcome this entreaty. All God’s children like better productivity because… And there Mr Draghi inadvertently pointed at the fundamental problem I’ve alluded to.

Unless we become more productive, explained the former prime minister of Italy, Europe will have no chance of becoming “a beacon of climate responsibility” or of “financing its social model… This is an existential challenge.”

No, it isn’t. And thinking it is lies at the root of the problem.

I happen to regard ‘climate responsibility’ as nothing but a cynical, anti-scientific power-grab by our socialist governing elites, and I don’t have a good word to say for their ‘social model’ either. However, even assuming that governments should be concerned about warm weather and the millions sponging on the state, neither should be their first order of priority.

Such things are strictly secondary, not to say tertiary, to the reason why governments were first instituted among Men, to use the language of America’s clearly misogynist Founders. (They should have said “among Men, Women, Other”. Perhaps it’s time to get the old blue pencil out.) The primary responsibility of any state is to protect the people against those who threaten their liberty, safety and property.

That is to say against foreign enemies, domestic tyrants – and criminals. Everything else, even things immeasurably more important than “climate responsibility” and “social model”, should come into consideration only after the primary function of government has been taken care of.

Hence any responsible statesman in any civilised country has a simplified task of drawing budgets, and focusing one’s mind always simplifies intellectual conundrums.

He should look at the pot of money available or realistically projected and decide how much of it is required to provide for proper defence of the realm and effective law enforcement. That done, he can then decide how to allocate what’s left. But first things first.

I don’t know whether there are any civilised countries left in the world, but what I know for sure is that none of those with even a tenuous claim to that distinction is governed by responsible statesmen. That’s why they wilfully do things in reverse.

They start with allocations for things they hope will keep them in power a while longer, such as “social models”, “climate responsibilities”, education that indoctrinates without educating, subsidies for their sponsors and likely voters, foreign aid for assorted despots and so on.

Only then do they look at what’s left and plan how best to spend it. And if as a result our streets become inundated with released murderers, and our country is no longer capable of defending herself, so be it. There isn’t enough money for such incidentals. We’re skint.

Considering the problem in hand, the government should build as many prisons as it takes to keep all convicted criminals locked up for the duration of their sentence. Letting them out because we can’t afford to keep them in is in itself criminal, as is the refusal to arrest criminals because of prison overcrowding. Starmer is right: such a choice should never arise.

Alas, our ‘leaders’ can’t think along such lines. Instead they blame the previous government, Tory if it’s Labour laying the blame, the other way around when Tories are in power. Yet in this respect, the difference between them is marginal, if any. All of them have lost track of the main role governments should play, busying themselves with walk-ons instead.

That’s why I hope Messrs Cameron, Sunak et al. will join Sir Keir onboard his private jet. Once the paint job has been finished.