Burnham has said it’s all on his Justice Secretary now when it comes to early release. He also failed to guarantee that PC Harper’s two killers won’t be released early:
“What I have said is that I believe we can go much further, and I hope we can get to a position where people who have committed serious crimes are not in a position where they are being released early, and that would include the killers of PC Andrew Harper. That is my intention. I believe we can do it, but I now have to give time to the Justice Secretary to develop that plan, put in the detail, and present it to Parliament in around three weeks’ time.”
This is after he insisted that he had already gone as far as possible, and Downing Street saying yesterday it was “not possible” to keep Harper’s killers behind bars. Burnham’s populism making contact with reality…
Lord Khan in the Telegraph: “I hope, and I say this in a non-pompous way, that the public service I do will bring rewards in this world and the hereafter,” he says. “I’m hoping the work I do is earning me Brownie points.”