Disgraced former cabinet minister, Jonathan Aitken, was convicted for perjury and perverting the course of justice in June 1999, and only sentenced to 18 months imprisonment, and he was paroled after only serving 7 months. In prison we would dismiss this brevity as only being in long enough for a shit and shave. Miracles of miracles "Mr Aitken revealed that he turned to God in a prayer on his first night in jail as inmates started a derogatory quiz about him".
I don't go in for all this 'born again christian' crap. Even if I did, with such a speedy conversion as described here, I would still have my doubts about it being genuine in Aitken's case. Bearing in mind that he would go to church once a week, before his downfall, to keep up appearances whilst at the same time getting involved in some very, very dodgy dealings both as a Tory MP and later with illegal shipments of arms to Saudi Arabia.
I am questioning Aitken's integrity. He claims that "he denied any wish to resume public life". And yet, "Tomorrow sees the publication of a comprehensive new report on prison reform by the Centre for Social Justice, Locked Up Potential, which has been written by an 11-strong working group chaired by former Cabinet minister (and ex-prisoner) Jonathan Aitken". I would say that this is a fine example of being in the public life.
In the same way that I am not convinced that the Tory party has changed for the better, I am not convinced that Aitken has found genuine redemption and has been reformed. This has all the hallmarks of a PR exercise, in other words, it is pure spin.
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