Finely Balanced

The Conservatives are supposed to be good on law and order. I cannot remember when, exactly, they ever have been. But they are supposed to be.

With no fewer than three bad stories for them on that front today (the prisons, John Worboys, and Oliver Mears), they are in serious trouble. Mears, in particular, raises the question of what, exactly, it would take for Alison Saunders to have to resign as Director of Public Prosecutions.

Perhaps if she had been found to have spent a year, and heaven only knows how much public money, prosecuting someone against whom there was absolutely no evidence whatever, but whom she and her co-conspirators had wished to prevent from winning a municipal election and from contesting a parliamentary one?

Of course, she and her co-conspirators can spare themselves that fate. They know what they have to do.