Ah, the pleasure, the joy - a big news story that runs and runs, that is played down by some of our journalistic colleagues, saying 'it'll never happen', only to be confirmed by the Home Secretary on the Today programme yesterday. Yes, Charles Clarke does actually think that people on community punishment orders should wear some indentifiable uniform so that 'right thinking citizens' can see that they are being, well, punished.
The story came from an interview with Hazel Blears, the Home Office minister with responsibility for eradicating general yobbishness which apparently abounds in society. Spitting, swearing, wearing hoodies, that sort of thing. Gaby Hinsliff, the political editor, interviewed Blears last week. The quote jumped out at us. 'I want them to be identified,' she said of people who were given community sentences. We lead the paper with it. It had many of the elements you are looking for - it was controversial, it would be talked about, it was something that was a genuine attempt to raise a debate and it plugged into a subject that was already on the agenda. As we saw in the Queen's Speech, anti-social behaviour - a phenomenon that I believe to be a genuine worry that is also being fed by a lot of scare stories - is the political theme of the moment.
Blears did not make it clear what sort of 'uniforms' she was talking about. Orange bibs? Smart blue blazers? By Monday the Sun had decided in its lead story that it was orange, similar to chain gangs in the US. I'm not so sure. For a while Downing Street and the Home Office were not so sure either, saying that Blears' comments were not 'policy'. We never said they were. By now, with Clarke's backing, it is clear it is plan being very seriously considered.
Of, course it always cheers a news editor when a story has what we describe as 'legs' (therefore it, erm, runs). But last week the Observer should also be glad of another story that we ran on the front page - this newspaper's backing for the Make Poverty History campaign, I think the first newspaper to do so. Over two pages inside the paper Mark Townsend and Nick Mathiason wrote an elegant article on why it is now the time to act. We will be returning to the subject over the weeks leading to the crucial G8 summit at Gleneagles. Go to makepovertyhistory.org to get involved.
