From Cabinet Minister To Prisoner To, Well, Nothing Much, Really.

This week has seen much frothing at the mouth from socialists, led by The Guardian and Tom Watson, Labour MP for West Bromwich East. And this is over Jonathan Aitken, a Conservative who was Chief Secretary to the Treasury between July 1994 and July 1995, before resigning to fight a court case and getting sent down for perjury. In prison he became an evangelical.

Iain Duncan-Smith was Conservative leader between September 2001 and October 2003, when he lost a vote of confidence among Conservative MPs, and in his post-leadership life he concentrated on setting up the Centre for Social Justice and was asked by David Cameron, the current Leader of the Opposition, to chair a policy group on social justice, with the report, Breakdown Britain, published over the summer.

And now Duncan-Smith is concerned about prison reform, and has asked Aitken to chair a CSJ commission into this.

Note, it's Duncan-Smith, not Cameron, who has asked Aitken.

Note further, it's a CSJ commission (independent of the Conservative party) and not a Conservative party commission.

Of course, socialists aren't remotely bothered about trivial things like facts. For The Guardian, it's as if Aitken has been put in charge of drawing up Conservative policy on prisons. Er, prison policy is the responsibility of Shadow Minister for Prisons, Edward Garnier, and his boss, the Shadow Justice Secretary, Nick Herbert.

And Watson has asked whether Neil Hamilton will be put in charge of reviewing parliamentary standards and Shirley Porter in charge of reviewing housing policy.

I see that there is a bit of fuss over pension reform. I suggest Labour call in the guy who was Labour MP for Bedford from October 1964 to June 1970- Robert Maxwell. Oh, they can't. He "fell overboard" after it was found out how he had been stealing from pension funds. The thing Labour forget is just how many skeletons there are in their cupboard.

And the irony is that Herbert and Garnier are currently reviewing Conservative prison policy- and are not working with Aitken on it.