Joined-up misgovernment

The scandal of foreign national prisoners freed from jail without being considered for deportation might have been devised by some malign genius actively seeking to damage the social fabric of this country. So much has been undermined by this devastating disclosure: public confidence in the criminal justice system, the fight against racist bigots such as the BNP, and what little respect remains for politicians and their capacity to govern us competently.

Charles Clarke has been right about one thing: there is much more at issue in this case than his own political fate. The fact that more than 1,000 convicted foreign criminals including killers, rapists and paedophiles have been let loose in this way reflects more than personal incompetence, gross as that has been. This awful statistic is also a symptom of a fundamental failure of governance: a yawning gulf between reasonable public expectations and the capacity of the state to respond to those expectations.