Voting is for Nice People

All in all, the Government probably contains only a slightly larger proportion of thieves, fraudsters, scroungers and confidence tricksters than the House of Commons as a whole; so naturally the idea of convicted offenders having voting rights is even more nauseating to the Bullingdon Club than the idea of regular proles having any rights whatever. Two men serving life sentences are claiming, respectively, the right to be added to the electoral register and the right to vote in European elections, and Daveybloke's legal aide has been making clear to the supreme court the Government's preferences in the matter. The cases highlight "important questions as to the proper respective roles of the courts and of parliament", so naturally the Government is anxious to get them both thrown out as quickly as possible. Parliament, for its own part, is still reeling with righteous indignation at the Euro-wogs' ruling that denying all prisoners the vote is illegal; and doubtless both major wings of the British Neoliberal Party are deeply concerned at the possibility of unguarded custodians like Serco or G4S making one of their occasional minor errors in a privatised prison and handing some future election to the lesser-paying candidate.