ENGLAND: Ignore the tabloids. The death penalty is a dead issue -- Even in these fevered times, support for hanging is in decline

Bring back the rope! The competition to shout it first was won by Richard Littlejohn in the Sun on Friday, even before the children's deaths were certain. The Mail followed quickly: "Only the death penalty would properly satisfy our ultimate need for justice" wrote Mary Kenny. Simon Heffer yesterday won the prize for sheer barminess, claiming liberal permissiveness is to blame for Dunblane and for this horror: "These 2 children were murdered in part by a liberal society that breeds so many people who can do such a thing, who lack the inhibition of human decency." (The number of children killed by strangers has remained steady at around 6 a year during liberal and illiberal times). But even Ann Widdecombe, calling for the death penalty on the Today programme (by nice clean lethal injection), rightly judged that this is a dead duck of an issue.

 None the less, liberals have always been uncomfortable about public opinion and hanging. Ever since it was abolished in 1965, by parliament and with no referendum, the right has attacked what Simon Heffer calls "the ruling liberal elite" or what Littlejohn calls "the Guardianistas" who "hold the views of the majority of their own countrymen and women in contempt and do their damnedest to stifle honest debate on matters like the euro, illegal immigration and crime". This may be rowdy populism, but the accusation hits home. Democrats are right to feel uneasy about MPs forcing through important policies against public opinion. Those who agree with them on the particular issue will praise their leadership, those who oppose will damn them as undemocratic.

 Hanging was the perfect example of this conundrum. Back in 1965 it would never have been abolished by referendum, let alone a little later in the wake of the Moors murders. It required politicians (mainly, but not all, Labour) brave enough to stand up to public opinion, to cast their votes in the Commons and take the flak back in their constituencies for following their consciences. Was that undemocratic, or was it giving the leadership they are elected for? When politicians slavishly follow the focus groups and opinion polls, they are rightly despised for craven lack of principle. When it comes to the death penalty, there can be few more contemptible spectacles in the democratic world than the ritual killing of death row criminals, a blood rite of passage US politicians seem obliged to commit to reach office. Remember how Clinton came to power proving his suitability for world leadership through the necessary slaughter of a brain-damaged young man.

 Representative democracy means entrusting government to others. In these relatively undramatic times, declining numbers of people want to be bothered with the details of politics (however mistakenly the BBC tries to jazz up its coverage to catch their attention). Why not? Because we hire specialists to do most jobs for us and fire them if they do it badly. Few would prefer to be ruled by the passing whim of internet voters on every issue: referendums in countries that have them frequently have pitiful turnouts with maverick results.

 Good leadership means getting out ahead of the people. Sometimes it may mean getting it wrong (the poll tax) and paying the price. But other times it means leading voters forward to understanding better what works and what doesn't, especially in crime and punishment. The Daily Mail must have been surprised and disappointed with their poll yesterday, as they tucked it away on an inside page, but it showed the extent to which British voters are becoming far more sophisticated in these things than the Mail or the Sun realise. People are getting - horrors - a lot more liberal.

 Even in this fevered atmosphere of despair and disgust at child murder, only 56% told the Mail's pollsters they wanted capital punishment. This shows a startling drop in recent years. As recently as 1995, after it was last debated in parliament, Mori found 76% in support. Yesterday's Mail poll showed remarkable public restraint: only 20% said paedophiles should be chemically castrated and only 23% wanted them locked away for ever. As for assessing risk, more people think Britain a safe place for children than think it unsafe. They take a pretty balanced view. Mori found the same at the time of the Sarah Payne conviction: only 41% called for the death penalty, while 49% called for a whole life sentence (which is what the judge gave). When the News of the World commissioned Mori to ask if the public supported their "name and shame" outing of paedophiles, they got an answer they didn't like: only 38% said it was right, while 51% said it was wrong.

 L aw'n'order is no longer a simple political slogan. Crime is still a top concern, but the old hang 'em high or throw-away-the-key rhetoric no longer resonates as it did. It is one reason the Conservatives are so dazed and confused: the people are changing. They may enjoy rightwing tabloids, but they no longer swallow their nostrums. Consider this 2001 Mori poll: asked what most helps to reduce crime, 55% said better parenting while only 8% said sending more people to prison. Some 40% chose more activities for bored young people. Most people don't think prison works: 59% thought it made criminals worse, only 14% thought it did good. Asked how best to spend extra money on reducing crime, only 2% chose more prison.

 The problem is that people still take their facts, if not their ideas, from misleading sources. Reading scares about soft sentences, they underestimate actual punishments. Professor Mike Hough of South Bank University says: "People are cynical about justice because they are misinformed about sentencing." Some 72% of adult burglars go to jail but most people think it's 30%. When asked what sentences people should get, public opinion mostly accords with what actually happens, but they don't know it.

 Capital punishment is fading in support along with the last of those who remember it. But it is curious how everything in politics is infected by that very British streak of poison - Europhobia. One reason why the Europhobic press is floating this dead duck hanging issue is to tell the voters that even if they wanted to bring back hanging "Europe" wouldn't let them. Ann Widdecombe - who whatever else, is no fool - cunningly elided the European Union with the entirely different European Convention on Human Rights, suggesting Brussels was at it again. In fact, while EU law is binding, any section of the Human Rights Act can be repealed at any time, so if we really wanted to start hanging or frying people, we could. But by now, if there were a referendum on hanging, I would bet the mortgage that the Mail and Sun would lose it. A generation of politicians has persuaded large numbers of people on the issue, through good leadership. Just as they will persuade people on the euro when the referendum comes. 

The Express

ENGLAND: Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith is ready to back the re-introduction of the death penalty for the murder of children in a move which will delight Conservative Right-wingers.

He is expected to signal his support for hanging child-killers at the Conservative conference in October.

 Mr Duncan Smith has not spoken out on the issue so far to avoid being accused of jumping on a media bandwagon after the murders of Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells.

 While the Tory leader will make clear that Parliament would be allowed a free vote on the issue under a future Conservative government, he will underline his own deeply-held belief that capital punishment is the only appropriate sentence for adults who slaughter children in cold blood. The move would involve Westminster taking back powers ceded to Brussels by Tony Blair under the controversial Human Rights Act, which includes a protocol banning signatories from implementing the death penalty except in times of war.

 Tory candidates who agree with Mr Duncan Smith will be encouraged to make their views clear in personal manifestos at the next election.

 Friends of Mr Duncan Smith say the clinching argument is that, as the law currently stands, there is almost an incentive for paedophiles who have seriously sexually assaulted children to go on to murder them.

 Prison sentences for serious sex attacks on children are almost as long as for those who kill children and paedophiles may believe they have far more chance of avoiding detection if they murder their victims after assaulting them.

 However, if sex attackers knew that murdering victims would result in them being executed if detected it could alter their calculations.

 When Parliament last held a vote on restoring the death penalty, in February 1994, Mr Duncan Smith and a clutch of senior shadow cabinet members voted in favour.

 Yesterday former shadow home secretary Ann Widdecombe led calls for a debate to begin on the reintroduction of the death penalty to act as a deterrent.