John Hirst defends votes for murderers, rapists, paedophiles...

This interview is quite sickening: His Grace neither agrees with John Hirst, nor does he feel inclined to defend John Hirst's right to say it.

It is widely held that this odious individual murdered Bronia Burton, his 63-year-old landlady, by bludgeoning her to death with an axe.

He then went to the kitchen to make coffee and drank it, waiting for Mrs Burton to die.

Slowly.

In agony.

He doesn't like being called a murderer, because he was found guilty of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility and sentenced to 15 years in prison.

In the event, he served 25 years due to a number of violent crimes he committed whilst incarcerated.

He is completely unrepentent, believing remorse to be 'a middle class thing'.

In sentencing John Hirst, Mr Justice Purchis said: "I have no doubt you are an arrogant and dangerous person with a severe personality defect."

This interview with Andrew Neil establishes that beyond doubt.

And now we have to contemplate giving the vote to people like this.

The Prime Minister is reported to be 'exasperated and furious' about the ECHR ruling. In Prime Minister's Questions today, he said it makes him 'physically ill' to contemplate giving the vote to anyone in prison.

If he had any sense of the moral outrage being felt by all right-thinking people (and one or two on the left), he would simply have stood at the Despatch Box today and declaimed: "No, no, no!".

It is not political pragmatism which accepts this judgement; it is moral cowardice.

Either Parliament is sovereign or it is not.

It is not for foreign judges to dictate the law to our elected representatives; it is for our elected representatives to govern in the national interest.