Ken clarke

What do the public think of Ken Clarke after his gaffe on Wednesday? According to a YouGov poll conducted during the 48 hours since his comments, a slim pluarlity think he should resign from his post as justice secretary: Perhaps unsurpisingly, the majority of Labour supporters agree with their leader's call for him to go, although a majority of Tories and two-thirds of Lib Dems think he ought to stay. When it comes to the issue at the centre of the furore - reducing the sentence for someone who pleads guilty by up to half (as opposed to a third, as it stands now) - the public is much more set against Clarke: More specifically, 33 per cent say there should be no reduction in sentences at all for people who plead guilty, whatever their crime.

The Ken Clarke media storm continues. But, talk to lawyers and they complain that the Justice Secretary did not have sufficient command of his brief to redirect Victoria Derbyshire’s line of questioning. There was one particularly illustrative example when she said: “(The starting points) for single offence of rape by a single offender are 10 years’ custody if the victim is under 13, eight years’ custody if the victim is 13 but under 16, and five years’ custody if the victim is 16 or over.” Those numbers look a little light and they create the impression that the justice system is soft on rapists. Clarke should have countered that Derbyshire’s example lies at the very bottom of the CPS’ sentencing guideline scale.

It is hard to overstate the fury with Ken Clarke in the Cameroon circle today. One well-informed Tory source just told me, ‘they [Cameron and Osborne] just can’t wait to see the back of him’ before pondering whether Clarke was now just too old for frontline politics. Another bemoaned that Clarke had managed both to deepen the party’s problems with women and further undermine its reputation as the party of law and order. While one more couldn’t believe how on a day when unemployment fell, two men were charged with the murder of Stephen Lawrence and the Queen and PM were marking a new era in Anglo-Irish relations, the coalition had managed to get a series of bad news stories to top the bulletins.

David Cameron is determined to get away from the idea of an annual Cabinet cull. He has repeatedly told friends that he doesn’t want to reshuffle the Cabinet until March 2012. But The Times, the most pro-coalition paper, today uses its leader column (£) to call on Cameron to reshuffle straight after the May elections. I suspect that Cameron will only reshuffle the Cabinet, as opposed to the junior ranks, if AV passes. But there are a few Tory junior ministers who would impress as Cabinet ministers. Greg Clark and Nick Herbert, two members of the pre-election shadow Cabinet who missed out on the Cabinet because of coalition, have both performed well as junior ministers.

What to make of Sadiq Khan and Ken Clarke? As Pete has noted, Khan (and Ed Miliband) empathises with Ken Clarke’s instincts. But, as Sunder Katwala illustrates, Khan’s support is qualified. Khan gave speech last night after which he took questions. One of his answers was as follows: "It's no use us wanting to cuddle Ken Clarke - I don't want to cuddle Ken Clarke but perhaps others do - when he is part of a government which has got policies which will see the number of people committing crime going up." He was referring to alleged cuts to police numbers and devices such as the educational maintenance allowance, as well as the pressure on education and mental health in prisons. The implication is that prison works if you throw enough money at it.

When it comes to the overall sway of British politics, Sadiq Khan's article for the Guardian is probably the most important of the day. We've heard Ed Miliband say before that, "when Ken Clarke says we need to look at short sentences in prison because of high re-offending rates, I'm not going to say he's soft on crime." But Khan's article, a summary of a speech he is giving later today, actually puts that sentiment into practice – and then some. His central argument is straight from the Hush Puppied One's playbook, particularly in its emphasis on the limitations of New Labour's policy: "Some claim crime fell because of the rise in the numbers imprisoned. But the relationship between crime rates and prison population is more complex than that.

The Conservative side of the coalition is being increasingly split by the issue of the European Convention on Human Rights. After the Supreme Court in London declared that human rights legislation required that sex offenders had to be given a chance to take their names off the register, the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister were appalled. In a statement to the Commons, May made some trenchant criticisms of the court ruling. This, I understand, prompted a furious letter from Clarke, the Justice Secretary, to May reminding her that she was constitutionally obliged to accept the independence of the judiciary. The letter was copied to Downing Street as the Prime Minister himself had used very similar language to May.

Another Saturday, another interview with Ken Clarke. This time, the bruised bruiser has been talking to the FT and the remarkable thing is that he has managed to say nothing. Not a sausage. Colleagues were not insulted, Middle England escaped unscathed and the European Court of Human Rights wasn’t even mentioned.  But Clarke conveys his determination to fight. He defends his prison reforms and community sentences, to which the right has now applied the grave term ‘misconceived’. Clarke retorts: ‘We are trying to take 23 per cent out of the budget. I don’t recall any government that’s ever tried to make any spending reductions on law and order – let alone 23 per cent.