Under The Relevant Framework

The new Minister for Safeguarding is Satvir Kaur. The choice of Southampton's most prominent Sikh is a strong statement, so I forgive Andy Burnham for not having ennobled and appointed me. But I assert my expertise. This time last year, I was in Britain's most overcrowded prison. Four years after my first stretch, the most striking change was that between 60 and 80 per cent of men inside were now there for looking at a woman the wrong way, if we had looked at her at all. My case was the most astonishing that anyone, staff or inmate, had ever heard, but to my mind plenty came close, although people who had spent more time in the system found them run-of-the-mill these days.

For example, there was a man whose ex-wife had turned up at his house with the Police already in tow, thereby placing him in breach of his restraining order, in full view of the Police, the moment that she set foot on his doorstep. That was not an isolated incident. The prisons are at breaking point primarily because of this sort of thing, including the routine remand even of boys of 18 and of men who had never previously had so much as a parking ticket. The stockades of working-class male employment were destroyed, creating a new ruling elite of middle-class women, funded and empowered by the State. Here we are.

And not only domestically. You wanted the International Criminal Court. We didn't. We said that it would only ever be used against black Africans and against whoever was the wrong sort of Slav that week. Until 24 November 2024, we were pretty much right. While talk of being "democratically elected" is of no relevance, the point is well made that all sorts of monsters had never attracted the ICC's attention. We told you that they would not. But in addition to three Hamas commanders who have since been killed with the precision that the Americans and the Israelis claimed was impossible in Gaza, Lebanon or Iran, Karim Khan KC secured what are still outstanding warrants for the arrest of Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant. So he is being given the Julian Assange, Alex Salmond and Cardinal Pell treatment.

Cleared of all wrongdoing by a panel of three judges, Khan has still been removed as the ICC's Chief Prosecutor. The 125 members states held a secret ballot, but before casting its vote the British Government refused to meet this British citizen, so there is no doubt how that vote was cast. Unless his suicide came as a surprise to no one more than to him, then Khan will join the comparers of battlescars in HMP Durham.