Why releasing prisoners early could be a victory for ‘sensible Starmer’

During his cabinet career in the Brexit deadlock years 2016 to 2019, David Gauke was the government’s voice of reason. It is a clever appointment politically, because Gauke carries some cross-party weight as a former Tory justice secretary – although Tory Brexit sectarians regard him as a socialist or worse. Nor was Gauke at justice long enough to do anything about the increasingly long sentences that were filling up our prisons, although he did make a sceptical speech saying he didn’t think short sentences were effective in cutting crime. Some Conservatives and their cheerleaders in the Tory press continue to insist that Labour has just made up the “£22bn black hole” in the public finances, despite the impartial Institute for Fiscal Studies confirming that the new government did inherit an unexpected in-year shortfall. We know that Chalk pleaded with Rishi Sunak in the week before the prime minister called the election to order “SDS40” – the policy adopted by Mahmood a few weeks later to release some prisoners after 40 per cent of their sentence, instead of 50 per cent.