I predict a riot

Strange times, strange times indeed: our blossoming prison population is to become enfranchised and a load of middle class students are busy rioting in central London.

Police report such well-spoken anarchists, and the role call of names and addresses hardly reads like your average set of antecedents down the Mags. It will be rather like University Challenge: 'Next defendant sir on your list, Tarquin Featherdown-Duvet, reading anthropology at the University of Amusingparties, charged with one count of Being Daft Enough To Get Caught and one count of Jeopardising His Entire Future; co-defendant Susie Hobnob, like offences,' etc. Shame, really, that the courts have done away with Latin '“ there was a good chance that for once there could have been a defendant who might have been able to follow what was going on.

Then we have the prime minister grudgingly conceding that the lads on A wing are going to get the vote. This presents all sorts of issues: in what constituency are they going to be in? Home or 'inside'? If it is 'inside' then this will present particular canvassing problems for the parliamentary candidates and aspirant councillors (thank goodness we don't vote for our police chiefs!) If you have HMP Wandsworth in your constituency, or Bullingdon in rural Oxfordshire, then you have a sizeable chunk of voters who could 'swing it for you'. So what do you promise them in your manifesto? It has always been said that 'there are no votes in prisons' but this is going to change dramatically '“ on the contrary, there are lots of votes in prisons.

Promises, promises

So what does the budding MP say to the prison vote? Liberalise drugs? Build more prisons? Increase the drink-drive limit? Banish prisons? More community sentencing?

There could be all sorts of problems if you have gone and made a load of promises like Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats did, and then you go back on them '“ like, for example, okay chaps, if you elect us we promise to reduce all your jail terms by 50 per cent, and it's a free television with Sky sports in every cell (part of the rehab package).

Then of course you get elected and decide that that is all too expensive, so you decide that it is no longer possible. Well you then have a lot of very disgruntled constituents on your hands. And we saw what happened when the students put down their notepads and highlighter pens for the day and decided to protest; but this, I suspect, may be a lot more tasty indeed '“ after all, these guys REALLY know how to riot.

So, strange times indeed: we have the respectable student classes getting up to no good in London, and we have theprisoners being given civic responsibility behind the prison wall. There could be some lively debate.

True blue

But we should not think that all of our inmates would vote Labour, say. There is a real streak of conservatism that runs through the veins of the dyed in the wool career criminal.

For example, they consider private enterprise to be a very good thing indeed '“ they don't sit around all day and all night waiting for somebody to drop the cash in their lap, my goodness no: they get in their cars and they go out and get it for themselves.

They deplore the interference of the state in their lives, much preferring self-regulation '“ if someone is 'out of order' then rather than get wound up in a lot of red tape and slow-moving administration, it is much quicker to sort it out in the pub carpark with the judicious use of whatever you slipped into your pocket when you left home that evening.

They don't like taxation (indeed many see it as a way of making money), they don't approve of the nanny state, they hate sex offenders more than the Daily Mail does, they are fiercely patriotic to the extent of believing wholeheartedly that to express pride in the nation's football team can be articulated by trashing foreign cities and urinating in fountains.

They believe in driving as fast as you like (so no speed cameras), the right to bear arms (shooters, blades, explosives), they are anti-surveillance (so no irksome CCTV cameras everywhere), they like dangerous dogs (Pitbulls), have no trouble with blood sports (hunting, bare knuckle fighting), and disapprove of high taxes on booze and fags (why else resort to bootlegging?). So, you see, a bunch of natural Tories.

Perhaps the prime minister is having a laugh and this is all part of his electoral reform plan '“ fewer constituencies and more Conservative voters? The irony is of course that just as these natural-born Tories get the vote, they are going to have their numbers swelled by lots of well-spoken pinko-lefty students who are going to vote against the government. Perhaps the real way for any government to proceed is to charge people for going to prison '“ a sort of Con-tax.

You see that is one way that might nip in the bud all those jolly nice rioters '“ if you explain that the other 'university' is charging as well, then they might just put up with the one that has toasters, internet access and fetish parties down the union on Saturday nights with as much cider as you can bring up thrown in, as opposed to 23 hours a day bang-up, terror, and the waste of days.

Ah yes, strange times, strange times indeed.