What’s the story behind the row about sentencing?

The justice secretary and lord chancellor, Shabana Mahmood, has failed in her attempt to persuade the independent Sentencing Council to review its latest sentencing guidelines.

- SEAN O'GRADY

Although they were consulted on before the change of government last year, they’ve recently become the subject of intense controversy because they set out a series of criteria in the presence of which judges and magistrates are encouraged – these are guidelines, not rules – to ask for a pre-sentence report on the convicted.

Among less controversial factors, such as pregnancy, mental illness and first offending, are race, religion and gender. The allegation is that the guidelines amount to discrimination against white men. Obviously it has all played out robustly on social media...

Why did Mahmood fail?

She fell into a bit of a trap from where she couldn’t easily win. Taunted by her shadow opposite number, Robert Jenrick, she pledged to remedy matters – but it was not in her hands to do so. Her pledge earlier this month that there would “never be a two-tier sentencing approach under my watch” was foolish. If she lost, she risked ridicule. So it has come to pass.