Rumpled But Affable
The Guardian has a remarkable editorial today - praising the Home Secretary - the slightly rumpled but ever affable, Ken Clarke.
A policy U-turn most definitely - completely at odds with the Conservative manifesto in the general election - but not a protestor or howling mob in sight.
As they say - politics is a funny old business.
"In praise of … Ken Clarke
The justice secretary has a hinterland that makes him certain of who he is - and certain that he has nothing to prove
It wasn't the first time he'd provided radio listeners with a breath of fresh air: thanks to a BBC strike in 2005, clock radios set for the Today programme did not wake their owners to John Humphrys' grumbling, but to the altogether more agreeable sound of Ken Clarke chortling about Dizzy Gillespie.
When the justice secretary took to the airwaves yesterday, his purpose was more serious – to blow a gale through a generation of failed thinking on prisons, a failure that started the moment Clarke last lost control of penal policy. Since he was shuffled out of the Home Office in 1993, the prison population has doubled – a vastly wasteful development in financial and human terms.
Yes, Ken can be arrogant, and yes, he has peddled cigarettes, but his great appeal is that once he is persuaded by the force of an argument, he doesn't give a monkey's for what editors, colleagues or anyone else thinks. Pushed to reaffirm that prison worked yesterday, he offered hard-headed pragmatism in place of the dogma Michael Howard bequeathed to a line of New Labour successors.
Sweeping up evidence from New York to the Netherlands, a swaggering Clarke dismantled the link between mass jailing and the downward drift in crime, giving liberals a moment of cheer in a week dominated by Europhobic legislation and broken promises on university fees.
Like another prime minister that wasn't, Denis Healey, the bird-watching Clarke has a hinterland that makes him certain of who he is – and certain that he has nothing to prove."
A policy U-turn most definitely - completely at odds with the Conservative manifesto in the general election - but not a protestor or howling mob in sight.
As they say - politics is a funny old business.
"In praise of … Ken Clarke
The justice secretary has a hinterland that makes him certain of who he is - and certain that he has nothing to prove
It wasn't the first time he'd provided radio listeners with a breath of fresh air: thanks to a BBC strike in 2005, clock radios set for the Today programme did not wake their owners to John Humphrys' grumbling, but to the altogether more agreeable sound of Ken Clarke chortling about Dizzy Gillespie.
When the justice secretary took to the airwaves yesterday, his purpose was more serious – to blow a gale through a generation of failed thinking on prisons, a failure that started the moment Clarke last lost control of penal policy. Since he was shuffled out of the Home Office in 1993, the prison population has doubled – a vastly wasteful development in financial and human terms.
Yes, Ken can be arrogant, and yes, he has peddled cigarettes, but his great appeal is that once he is persuaded by the force of an argument, he doesn't give a monkey's for what editors, colleagues or anyone else thinks. Pushed to reaffirm that prison worked yesterday, he offered hard-headed pragmatism in place of the dogma Michael Howard bequeathed to a line of New Labour successors.
Sweeping up evidence from New York to the Netherlands, a swaggering Clarke dismantled the link between mass jailing and the downward drift in crime, giving liberals a moment of cheer in a week dominated by Europhobic legislation and broken promises on university fees.
Like another prime minister that wasn't, Denis Healey, the bird-watching Clarke has a hinterland that makes him certain of who he is – and certain that he has nothing to prove."
