MICHAEL KNOWLES

Home Affairs Editor

- MICHAEL KNOWLES

THERE were champagne, supercars and declarations of support for Sir Keir Starmer and Labour.

This was not a party fundraiser or a gathering of the well-to-do at Royal Ascot or Wimbledon — but the scene as thousands of prisoners were released early.

Few crises sum up the state of modern Britain better.

The sight of a convict jumping into a £200,000 Lamborghini outside Pentonville Prison in London became the symbol of Labour’s disastrous early release scheme and repeated failures under the Conservatives.

After Dame Anne Owers’ scathing report on Tuesday showed how close the prison system came to collapse, the Tories insisted they responded to demands for criminals to be locked up for longer.

Yet their plans to expand the prison estate did not keep up with their sentencing reforms and an increase in 20,000 police officers.

Labour claim only 500 additional jail places were introduced.

It is said that Downing Street’s “default position was to do as little as possible as late as possible” as cells filled up. This led to emergency measures including inmates freed early and others held in police cells, as justice chiefs feared a breakdown in law and order with