Voting prisoners - oh dear ...

John Hirst comes across as a thoroughly unpleasant individual - and then you discover what he did to end up in prison and you are, frankly appalled.

But then we have to deal with the substance of the decision that Labour put off in 2005 and left to a later Government to pick up the pieces.  Personally, I agree with the idea that people who breach the contract with the rest of us should have some of their rights removed - the obvious example is that they lose their liberty - and without more, I am content with the idea that they should have their rights to vote removed for the time they are in prison - but it is the blanket ban that has been deemed to be disproportionate in the Hirst case.

So what happens next?  Hirst appears to claim that all prisoners should have the vote - but I don't think that is required.  I understand that in other European jurisdictions, the Judge decides in each case whether the convict should have his right to vote removed - and that would certainly be compliant - although the guidance to the Judiciary may be susceptible to legal challenge - all the way to the European Court in Strasbourg.

It is true to say that in the 1960's the law that felons lost their right to vote was abandoned for a period - and it was in 1969 that the law was updated to take into account the fact that we no longer distinguished between felonies and petty crimes or misdemeanours and restated in the form that so offended the ECHR.

In the second consultation that was undertaken by Labour in office, the conclusion reached was that the preferred option of that Government was to remove the right to vote on the basis of length of sentence.  You can read the report here.

The problem with that solution is that that may not comply either, although the author of the report appears to believe that it would comply - and that the only answer that would comply with the current understanding of the Strasbourg Court would be for the Judge to decide in each case whether the crime was sufficiently serious to justify the removal of voting rights.

I don't envy Kenneth Clarke and Dominic Grieve in their task to find a way through this particular minefield.  We already have the rather silly brigade jumping up and down and confusing, whether deliberately or simply in blissful ignorance, the EU and the Council of Europe (that body that is not to be confused with that other Council of Europe that is a part of the EU, of course) ... and that helps no-one.