Andy Burnham had hardly said, 'Okay, I'll take it,' to King Charles' handsome offer of the prime minister's job, when there was already all sorts of upset about any number of things.
For one, his choice of cabinet ministers had the wags agog. Scoundrels, scofflaws, and convicted frauds alike were welcomed with a beaming smile to No. 10 Downing Street to get a hug, handshake, and photo-op with their new boss.
There was a great game of 'will he, won't he' over drilling in the North Sea.
He has promised our president a 'pragmatic' approach, whatever that means to him at any given time. Burnham is nothing if not flexible.
Prime Minister Andy Burnham has said he told US President Donald Trump he would take a "pragmatic approach" to the issue of North Sea oil and gas.
Trump has long urged the UK to increase drilling and claimed that Burnham had pledged to "open up the North Sea" in their first phone call together.
Asked about the president's comments, the new prime minister said: "There is a resource there. When people are struggling - you can't ignore that and hence me indicating that to the president."
Burnham has faced pressure from some trade unions, industry figures and some of his own Labour MPs to back increased drilling in the North Sea.
The hardcore climate cultists in his Labour Party already have smelling salts out and are looking for chairs to swoon in.
One of the stickiest British wickets Burnham was going to have to tackle was a Labour Party plan that had been stewing before he took over regarding prison overcrowding, called the Labour Sentencing Act of 2026. The braintrust that had been running Britain and grossly mismanaged it for the past two years had come up with something as palatable and popular as one might expect - a wholesale early release program of what original estimates would have been some 7,000 serious offenders, with rapists and murderers under consideration for inclusion as well.
Naturally, this had British citizens on edge, not to mention victims and families frantic at who might soon be back on the street.
Take the horrific case of Police Constable Harper. People were incensed at the thought of the vicious trio responsible for his death walking out on half sentences from sentences that hadn't been nearly long enough to begin with.
In 2019 Pc Andrew Harper was dragged to his death by a getaway car, driven by teenage thieves whom he had tried to apprehend.
Pc Harper’s killers showed no remorse during their trial, laughing and joking throughout. When the verdict of manslaughter – rather than murder – was returned, some of their family members cheered as Pc Harper’s wife sobbed.
The 16-year sentence handed out to Henry Long, and the 13-year sentences of Albert Bowers and Jessie Cole, were thought shamefully insufficient by Pc Harper’s family. The Government agreed, passing Harper’s Law. This introduced mandatory life sentences for anyone convicted of killing an emergency worker while committing a crime.
Yet far from serving life, Bowers and Cole are eligible to be released as early as this September, due to Labour’s Sentencing Act 2026. More than 5,000 criminals – including killers and rapists – could be freed halfway through their sentences.
Knowing the fear and anger permeating the populace as this Act came into effect, in waltzes the new Prime Minister, and two of his cabinet choices are overheard at No. 10 the very day he takes office, joking about the early releases.
HOT MIC: Mahmood & Streeting Joke About Letting Prisoners Out Early https://t.co/jCzZYPcSWz pic.twitter.com/wyb45vebX5
— Guido Fawkes (@GuidoFawkes) July 21, 2026
But I didn't mean it, Wes Streeting bleated pathetically. It was just an inside jokey joke.
Not a haha to be found from anyone.
Wes Streeting has apologised for making a joke about the early release of prisoners.
The new Defence Secretary made the remarks on Tuesday in a conversation with Shabana Mahmood, the Home Secretary, and Alex Norris, the new Justice Secretary, which was picked up by a microphone.
In the overheard comments, first reported by the Metro, Mr Streeting suggested to Ms Mahmood that Mr Norris was “the enemy now” and “wants to let them all out”.
Mr Streeting, who was appointed to Andy Burnham’s Cabinet on Monday, said that the remark was a reference to a joke shared between Baroness May, the former Conservative prime minister, and Lord Clarke, the former Tory chancellor.
Fuel on the fire, and it only took twenty-four hours for Labour to start looking for the exit ramp. The non-answer spin cycle was soon running at warp speed...
...The Government has refused to answer even basic questions, such as how many criminals will be released, or how many of them are sex offenders. The former prisons minister Lord Timpson said it was “impossible for us to say exactly who will be released, where and when”. When we crunched the numbers ourselves, we worked out that 2,500 rapists and paedophiles alone are eligible.
The victims’ commissioner and the domestic abuse commissioner have both warned that the Government has failed to put in place key safeguards to keep victims safe. A hotline for victims that was promised months ago is still not operational.
From the limited information released by the Government, following our pressure, we know 8,700 victims have been warned that the perpetrators of crimes against them might be released. This includes Pc Harper’s mother, and many victims of the rape gangs, like Fiona Goddard who was groomed and raped by a gang in Bradford.
...even as the possibility was raised that heinous groups like the old rape gangs might soon have enough members released to get the band back together.
More and more cases of the insanely early releases already happening in the British legal system were adding to the public's sense of frustration and alarm.
Break multiple bones in a police officer's body, including his leg? 82 days should do - just a twenty-year-old kid, and all.
A young offender who broke a police officer’s leg was freed 82 days into his nearly three-year-and-ten-month sentence.
...[Alex] Quinn’s case illustrates how common early releases have become in the prison system through schemes such as home detention curfew (HDC), where criminals are eligible to be released on electronic tags after just a quarter of their prison term or after 28 days, whichever is longest.
In its letter to Mr Lammy, the federation described how Quinn, with his father Richard, beat Pc Ryan Davis in 2024 in Hereford city centre, leaving him with a broken and dislocated ankle, broken lower leg, multiple fractures and facial lacerations, including damage to his eye.
The officer was working in the city centre as part of a plain-clothes operation in April 2024, when he saw the Quinns trying to beat up another man. After he attempted to break it up they turned on him.
The lad's charming paterfamilias was an early out himself.
...Both father and son were freed early on HDC. While the younger Quinn was freed after fewer than three months, his father was freed after serving just 125 days of his four-year-and-three-month prison sentence.
By the last week of July, Burnham put the brakes on everything. Didn't stop it for good, mind you - just a pause to try to figure something out.
With Labour, that usually means doing nothing only until the heat is off and then back to business.
Andy Burnham has ordered the Ministry of Justice to halt the early release of prisoners amid outrage at the prospect of two of Pc Andrew Harper’s killers being freed from jail.
The Prime Minister said no prisoners would be freed under the scheme until the Government had reviewed it and “done everything we can to minimise risk to the public”.
The move threatens to plunge a prison system struggling with overcrowding into fresh chaos, as officials face having to work out new release plans for thousands of offenders just weeks before they were due to be freed.
Some 6,000 prisoners, including killers, rapists and other violent criminals, had been set to be freed in monthly tranches from Sept 2.
Mr Burnham had announced a review of the scheme on Wednesday after The Telegraph disclosed that Albert Bowers and Jessie Cole were due to be freed early halfway through their 13-year sentences for the manslaughter of Harper in 2019.
The breathing space seems to have given the government time for a headcount in the confinement areas they have available. The most recent empty bed tally has supposedly given them a little 'wiggle room' as they phrase it to be a bit more discriminating about who they turn loose starting in September.
Andy Burnham may have more prison spaces to spare than anticipated, raising hopes that ministers could scale back the early releases of killers and rapists, official data suggest.
There are currently just over 2,100 spare places in men’s prisons in England and Wales – more than originally forecast.
Prison experts suggest this could give the Prime Minister the “wriggle room” to exempt some categories of the more serious violent and sexual offenders from Labour’s controversial early release scheme.
Some 6,000 prisoners, including killers, rapists and violent offenders, are due to be released early over the 10 months from Sept 2 in order to combat prison overcrowding and avoid running out of jail spaces.
But only a bit. They seem extraordinarily bent on opening the evil-doer floodgates. I'm afraid I don't understand this attitude.
Apparently one has to let murderers and rapists out in order to make room for naughty folks who act up in the heat of the summer.
...Ms Rowland said this could give the Prime Minister “a bit of wriggle room” to introduce exemptions for some of the most serious criminals but it could be a high risk strategy.
“Unrest in August could fill up prisons, outbreaks of violence in jails could shut down wings, taking out hundreds of spaces, and emergency repairs in ageing jails can be needed on health and safety grounds at any point,” she said.
“It depends on the Government’s appetite for risk. Are they willing to take a gamble that we have a quiet August and nothing goes wrong ... and it shakes out all right?”
And much like their constant energy crisis, this lack of space is a self-induced problem. They've added 500 prison 'spaces' over the past 14 years up to 2024 (I guess that's when they quit doing anything) (how weird - coincides with Labour taking over), but they've also closed 23 prisons.
Even I can do that math.
And now the police are speaking out that 'community policing,' such as it is, will basically go the way of the dodo thanks to the influx of early released violent offenders.
Britain faces fewer neighbourhood police and more offenders on the streets under Labour’s early prisoner release scheme, The Telegraph can reveal.
One of Britain’s most senior police officers has warned that cuts to neighbourhood policing are likely as the system seeks to manage 6,000 killers, sex offenders and drug dealers who are expected to be released from custody early.
Writing in The Telegraph, Assistant Chief Constable Jason Devonport said it was “an uncomfortable reality” that because of the overcrowding crisis criminals would now spend less time in prison and more time being managed in communities.
Burnham's brilliant Labour minister braintrust is coming up with ways to put them all to work cleaning up vandalism and littering.
It hasn't worked so far, so they want to make the 'community service requirements tougher' because the recidivism rates have gone through the roof ever since the British justice system did away with the concept of doing a couple of months to a year in jail. Instead, you clean sidewalks and go to anger management school or...something.
Oh, boy.
...Alex Norris, the new Justice Secretary, wants to make community service for offenders more demanding to deter offenders at a young age from going on to commit more serious crimes which result in jail sentences.
Since custodial sentences of less than 12 months were abandoned in March, many criminals have gone on to reoffend or breach their conditions, leading to extra pressure on policing.
If only this would work.
...It is understood Mr Norris wants community service to be more common for offenders who avoid custodial sentences and for them to complete unpaid work in their own neighbourhoods so residents can see that justice is being done and perpetrators are paying their debt to society.
But it won't.
As someone said, 'Why aren't they releasing all the pickpockets and shoplifters before the murderers and rapists?'
Well, gosh - there's a question only an avowed progressive trying to destroy the country could answer.
But they won't.
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