Leaking Bilge

Andy Coulson, the chief of propaganda for Daveybloke and his Cuddly Conservatives, has been accused of making policy on the hoof (or perhaps, given Coulson's credentials in the scumbag press, on the trotter would be the better phrase). The policy in question is the one about solving the overcrowding in Britain's prisons by spreading it onto ships, which would mean worse conditions for prisoners - no room for training or exercise - and is therefore a policy which Daveybloke's core constituents, Paul Dacre and Rupert Murdoch, would look upon with favour.

Alan Duncan, Daveybloke's Cuddly Minister for Profitable Incarceration, has apparently told a conference at Oxford University that the noted Conservative slogan "prison works" is simplistic and that the noted Conservative policy "lock 'em up" is "Key Stage 1 politics"; but this is merely Daveybloke's Blairite strategy of substituting slogan for policy and then varying the slogan according to the audience one is addressing, as when one promises the City to slash public spending while promising the public to maintain public services. Official Conservative policy on prisons, as on everything else that doesn't belong to the Conservative party's chums, is to sell them off - at least the ones in "prime city-centre locations" - and then to use the proceeds for building a lot of new prisons, presumably in more unfriendly and isolated locations so that, in the interests of family values and self-reliance, prisoners' relatives may work out for themselves the logistics and expense of visiting. However, falling property prices as dutifully screamed every other week in Dacre's Daily Mail have put a bit of a damper on this idea, and even Daveybloke's Cuddly Conservatives seem to think they ought to make some sort of show at keeping their promise to end New New Labour's early-release scheme, which has contributed to so many of our recent fictitious crime waves.

According to the director of the Howard League for Penal Reform, Coulson's announcement has caused concern to a number of Conservative front-benchers who have spent four or five years "developing carefully thought-out policies on crime and justice based on extensive consultation" with the devoted readers of Paul Dacre and Rupert Murdoch, and have now developed a belated concern for democratic accountability (ministerial influence, in Oldspeak). A spokesbeing has more or less called the director of the Howard League for Penal Reform a liar, but has also confirmed that Daveybloke's Cuddly Cabinet is considering the possibility of prison ships even though it isn't in their carefully-thought-out, five-years-in-the-making manifesto. Alas, it appears that crime has placed Daveybloke's Cuddly Conservatives in some danger of becoming a broken society.