On the contrary, if Boris Johnson were to propose reintroducing public hangings, He would have plenty of brainless Brits applauding him.

A Tory with a brain is Kenneth Clarke. If we are bound to have Tory MPs,   then let’s have more of his sort. It is such a pity that he has named the day of his departure from the Commons.

During his tenure as Justice Minister, under the Tory-Lib Dem coalition, he maintained that prison should not be only a punishment; it should be used as an opportunity to educate and rehabilitate, in order to reduce the scandalous rate of recidivism.

Short custodial sentences, which allow inadequate time for re-education, should be replaced by community sentences and restitution requirement.

At around 85,000, the UK has the biggest prison population in Europe and the highest rate of relapses into crime after release.  This makes our prisons, which are badly maintained, over-crowded, under-staffed,  insanitary, drug-ridden and violent, a grotesque squandering of money.  This was pointed out by Kenneth Clarke and so he was sacked.  Although the most popular Tory MP with the public, he was not liked by his fellow MPs. They resented his superior intellect and found his progressive ideas distasteful, especially his pro-Europe stance.

Many criminals come from a background of poverty, poor housing, families marked by addiction to alcohol, or drugs, or both, lack of qualifications and unemployability. Family pathology is one of the sources of crime that should be examined and targeted for major corrective investment.

Prison should be used to remove offenders from that sort of life and demonstrate that there is an altogether better life-style and equip them to live it.

Now we have Britain’s Trump going for the demagogic, populist line that will go down well with the millions of readers of the Daily Mail, Sun and Express, who readily swallow this unreformed Bullingdon Club member’s baloney.

His proposals on stop-and-search and longer prison sentences appeal to the unthinking and ill-informed and are not based on any evidence. The money is being invested in order to enhance his likelihood of beating Jeremy Corbyn to the premiership.

An increase in police numbers is to be welcomed, but an acknowledgment of his own complicity in the devastating and unnecessary austerity programme which decimated police forces and the prison service, would not go amiss. Of course, he can rely on his adulatory public to be unaware of all that.