Ed Miliband and penal reform

26Sep10

Congratulations to Ed Miliband, who has been elected the new leader of the Labour party.

Whatever the implications for Labour’s electoral chances – my own view is that people should not underestimate Miliband’s capacity to grow into the role, for the reasons Ben Brogan has elucidated here – the result is a good one for penal reform.

The fragile reform agenda emanating from Ken Clarke at the Ministry of Justice has plenty of enemies within the Coalition, and the temptation for a new Labour leader would be to outflank the government on the right with a recycling of New Labour law and order rhetoric.  It’s not at all clear how robust the Clarke reforms would turn out if the Coalition faced falling poll numbers and an opposition mercilessly exploiting a perceived softness on crime.

Fortunately, Miliband has made it clear that he does not believe Labour should “out-right the right on crime”.  Indeed, I was quite impressed that of all the candidates who appeared at the Howard League’s hustings, Ed had made a point of visiting a prison the day before.  His article in today’s Sunday Telegraph duly states that Ken Clarke’s proposals on crime are one of the areas of government policy where he will be generally supportive.

And so he should be.  The New Labour arms race on crime led to a record prison population, and a system paralysed with ill thought-out and disastrous legislation such as the indeterminate sentence for public protection (IPP).  The IPP is a good example of why Miliband is right to support the Coalition on criminal justice.  Thousands now languish in prison on IPPs beyond their tariff, with no prospect of release and no means of completing the courses and interventions required to go before the parole board.  Everyone in the criminal justice system knows this particular sentence was a mistake, and have known it for years.

While Labour in power was unable to renounce a sentence it created, it is likely the Coalition will take the necessary steps to abolish or severely limit the IPP by calling it what it is: an unaffordable and unworkable policy.  For Labour, this is an opportunity.  Not an opportunity to triangulate and cry foul but an opportunity to watch the Coalition do the dirty work and clean up a mess that New Labour created.  Given the Coalition is unlikely to win any popularity prizes for doing the right thing, Labour will benefit best by simply keeping quiet and letting Clarke get on with it.  This is something that I think Ed Miliband instinctively understands.

More generally, the election of Miliband means that we are now in the surprising position of seeing a major shift towards liberalism across the political spectrum.  As Anthony Painter has blogged, the contest between liberal conservatism and liberal social democracy will be a fascinating one.  I doubt the shift will last long, but while it holds we should see a steady rolling back of the authoritarian excesses of the last decade.

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