All prisoners should serve sentence in full, says Cameron

David Cameron has been attempting to make himself the new, caring, face of the Tory party; vowing that the party will be more inclusive and that, in future, they will not implement any tax cuts that would harm the economy.

This struck me as an astonishing admission that past tax cuts had harmed the economy, but no-one in the mainstream press seemed to pick up on this inference.

However, having demanded yesterday that the party must change at the same pace as it's leader, he nevertheless has to play to some extent to his base supporters.

Yesterday he made his attempt at this:

David Cameron pledged yesterday to scrap early release of prisoners and ensure they serve their full terms behind bars.

Promising that a Tory government would be "tough on crime", the Conservative leader said: "Prison will not be a deterrent until people serve the sentence they are given by the courts. It's ridiculous the way people are let out before their sentences are complete," he said in an interview with the News of the World.

"The first step would be to scrap Tony Blair's parole reforms, which now allow 30,000 criminals a year to be freed on licence before they have even completed half their sentence."

There are several problems with this stance. First, we already don't have enough prisons to hold the amount of people we jail; and secondly, one of the few ways we maintain order in our jails is by allowing early release of prisoners who behave.

It's ill thought out, incoherent, nonsense. Further proof that Cameron really doesn't have an ideology, other than trying to ape Blair; attempting to occcupy the middle ground whilst, simultaneously, appeasing the far right.

Blair has done this operating on the principle that the left have nowhere else to go and that, come election day, they will vote for him as the least bad option available.

With Cameron now copying Blair's cynical policy, it's no surprise that the electorate are becoming jaded with politics and that each election produces a smaller amount of voters at the ballot box.

The two million people who marched in London prior to the Iraq war prove that the electorate have not lost their interest in politics, they simply don't like the choices currently on offer.

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Tags: Cameron, Tory Party, Jails, Sentences, early release, parole,