It's deeply depressing that parts of the Government and opposition have set themselves on a collision course with the European Court of Human Rights over the question of prisoner votes rather than devise and debate a proportionate response to the Courts judgement.  Defying the rule of law in this way presents a dangerous 'slippery slope' for human rights protection in the UK. Such posturing is also already giving comfort to routine human rights violators such as Russia and Turkey while undermining the delicate progress towards human rights in the fledgling democracies of the Middle East.  
 
Yet no-one should deny the bind that politicians find themselves in over this issue.  It is a brave Member of Parliament who sticks her or his head above the parapet to make the case for prisoners being allowed to vote given the visceral media and public hostility to the idea.  Here the paradox of the Human Rights Act's respect of Parliamentary sovereignty is plain to see - it's politicians, not judges who are left to deal with unpopular decisions on such matters and who will be pilloried in the press and punished at the polling station for standing up for human rights.

Is there a way out?  I think there might be and the idea came from an informed source - Jonathan Aitken - who argues that the vote should be earned by prisoners and conditionally accorded to those on license.  I would anticipate that making votes a conditional reward for good behaviour for those prisoners who are assessed as being safe to begin the journey back to citizenship is likely to to enjoy greater public support than allowing prisoners to use human rights law to challenge their disenfranchisement at the point of sentencing.  

Would this satisfy the European Court judgement which - contrary to reporting - does not demand votes for all prisoners, only that the UK should not operate a blanket ban?  Those on remand, civil prisoners and unconvicted prisoners already maintain their right to vote. Giving the vote to some prisoners on license as both a reward for good behaviour and as part of a pathway back to citizenship would further demonstrate that the UK did not operate a blanket ban, while at the same time allowing the UK to maintain its commitment to stripping people of the right to vote as an ordinary part of prison sentencing.  

The alternative is for our politicians to go to the wall over this issue in a way that will irresponsibly set in train the diminution of all of our human rights and undermine those of vulnerable people across the world.  Given the options available to us to comply with the judgement, that seems like an extremely high and entirely avoidable price to pay.