EDITORIAL : THE GUARDIAN, ENGLAND

 

In praise of… Dave Lee Travis

At first, one might not see an immediate connection between a Burmese campaigner for democracy and a disc jockey best known for inventing a radio quiz based on snooker

Who can resist the story of the heroic dissident and the Hairy Cornflake? There has been inevitable excitement this week at Aung San Suu Kyi's recollection that listening to Dave Lee Travis on the World Service helped sustain her through years of house arrest. At first, one might not see an immediate connection between a Burmese campaigner for democracy, whose reflectiveness and courage are legendary, and a disc jockey best known for inventing Give Us a Break, the first (and surely last) radio quiz to be based on snooker. But as the Nobel peace prize winner has explained, Travis's show made her world "much more complete". It allowed her to tap into life outside her confinement in a way that a strict diet of news wouldn't: "The listeners would write in and I had a chance to hear other people's words." DLT has fallen into that category of entertainer who is considered within his own lifetime as a period piece. He is remembered for his almost ursine beard, the expanse of chest hair on show when he presented Top of the Pops, his habit of referring to himself in the third person, and the "quack quack oops" sound belched out when quiz contestants gave a wrong answer. Still, Aung San Suu Kyi is right that the constant news pumped out by today's World Service does not have enough light and shade. Decades of house arrest has made her an ardent listener. Being informed is important, but so is being entertained. As Travis's fan reminds us, it would be a poor diet that did not include some cheese.

Criminal justice: The revolution that never was

After David Cameron's rewriting of the justice bill, Kenneth Clarke's rehabilitative revolution lies in tatter

The brief illusion of liberal government disappeared with the publication of the sentencing bill on Tuesday. The Rose Garden promise had been for a calm coalition animated by progressive values and guided by reason. That promise was fleetingly fulfilled by the justice secretary, Ken Clarke. Last year he stood ready to unlock 20 years of failed thinking, with a green paper which accepted that Britain's drift towards mass incarceration was imposing an unacceptable human and financial cost. Now it has been decisively breached by a prime minister who once claimed to be a liberal Conservative.

Make no mistake: after David Cameron's rewriting of this bill, Mr Clarke's rehabilitative revolution lies in tatters. Its thrust had been to end avoidable incarceration and reinvest the money in doing something more productive than making bad people worse. Its detail consisted in drug treatment, work and training, but also – crucially – in specific plans that would have had the effect of cutting the number locked up by 6,450 as compared with the inherited plans. The biggest slice of that reduction was to come from a sensible move to relieve the pressure on Britain's creaking courts, by increasing the discount available for a guilty plea.

Mr Clarke jeopardised it all a few weeks ago with some singularly ill-chosen words which created the impression that some rapes were not serious. After that, the prime minister may have felt he had little choice but to stay the extra discount from the most heinous crimes, which he did a fortnight ago. Now he has gone further. He scrapped extra discounts across the board, and postponed a desperately needed rationalisation of indeterminate public protection sentences, under which thousands are currently unjustly banged up after their jail terms have elapsed. At a stroke, these moves knocked out nearly 4,000 of the notionally saved places, very likely enough to ensure that the current tally of inmates will not stabilise, but continue to rise. As if bent on securing that dismal outcome, Mr Cameron also announced new mandatory jail terms – the sort of eye-catching initiative associated with Tony Blair at his worst, and one that cuts entirely across Mr Clarke's stated desire to restore discretion to the judge who has listened to the facts of the case.

As Labour's Sadiq Khan pointed out, there will now be cuts to probation, cuts to youth offending teams and a fresh stretch on prison resources. What Mr Khan did not say is that the emerging retributive counterrevolution is the product of a rotten political culture, of which Labour is a part. Having promised to give Mr Clarke the space to reform, Ed Miliband called for his head in the midst of the rape row, and his party was shameless in damning the ending of remand for crimes that will not attract jail terms after sentence is passed – one of the few crumbs the justice secretary had salvaged. Even the Liberal Democrats have fallen eerily quiet. Many privately regarded the chance to get a grip on an out-of-control jail population as one of the most tangible benefits of coalition, but the third party's customary courage in criminal justice appeared to desert it as Mr Clarke hunted for friends.

But the greatest shame in this shaming tale is reserved for the prime minister. Where he belatedly bowed to reasoned objections over the NHS, this time he has been cowed by the tabloids. Having backed the Clarke plans in private, he emerged to trash them in public, calling his character into question the day after a Guardian/ICM poll revealed that his personal ratings had dived into negative territory. Mr Cameron has long faced both ways on crime, but on Tuesday he made his choice and lurched to the right by reheating the "two strikes and you're out" life sentences once associated with Michael Howard, the home secretary he worked for as a young man. For all his reinvention of the Tory aroma, liberal noses now catch a niff of the nasty party of old.

Scotland: New order, old questions

The Scotland bill may now seem a bit irrelevant with the election of a majority nationalist government

The election of the majority Scottish Nationalist government under Alex Salmond on 5 May means that the Scotland bill, which cleared its final Commons stages yesterday, may now seem a bit irrelevant. The bill, based largely on the Calman report of 2009, is a reformist unionist bill in line with the original thinking that led to devolution in 1998. SNP opposition, and the election of the majority SNP administration, with an independence referendum in its sights, may make the bill look like yesterday's politics. Yet increased powers for Scotland are still the constitutional option favoured by a majority of Scots. So the issues in the bill still matter.

Mr Salmond has actually been paying quite a lot of attention to the bill recently. He appears to be doing this for three main reasons. First, because he thinks he can win some extra concessions from London on financial matters. Second, because he wants to continue to present himself as Scotland's champion within UK politics. He cannot do this by standing aloof and simply condemning the new bill. And, third, because his independence strategy requires him to prove to pro-devolution voters that he has tried his best to make it work, but that Scotland's wishes have in fact been frustrated at every turn and that independence is therefore the only solution. Mr Salmond is out campaigning for a referendum yes vote already.

Yet it is too easy to treat independence as the only issue in Scottish politics. The truth is otherwise – as it was throughout much of the 2007-11 Scottish parliament as well. Independence remains a relatively low priority for most Scots, even after 5 May. The issues that matter most are the economy and public spending, the same as elsewhere. Even the SNP has always made clear that the referendum will not come before 2014 – the Bannockburn anniversary year. Between now and then, Mr Salmond will try to take every issue – whether taxation powers, public service reform or the workings of the UK supreme court – and frame it in a nationalist manner.

That may seem easy work right now, in the afterglow of 5 May and with, perhaps, a famous byelection victory over Labour in the offing at Inverclyde next week. But it will actually get a lot harder than Mr Salmond's cheery optimism would imply. Much of this focuses around paying for Scottish public services. There was a taste of that this week when the head of Scotland's local authorities, Rory Mair, challenged the SNP to show how it could bridge the "25% gap between what we need to spend and the resources we have".

Finding the £3bn to bridge that gap is just one of many big questions in Scotland to which independence is not the only answer.