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Call me a cynic, but when Andy Burnham started fumbling so badly over the early release of PC Andrew Harper's killers, I suspected it was political theatre.

I assumed he was deliberately conjuring a crisis – precisely so that, in one leap and a bound, he'd quickly overcome it.

Unlike his emotionless predecessor as Prime Minister, a lawyer who preferred abstract legal procedure to the messy reality of governing, Burnham was meant to have a sense of how the British public ticked.

Surely, I said to myself, 'Andy' couldn't be this tone-deaf, this weak? The whole country was appalled at the very thought of PC Harper's smirking killers being let out early: How could he fail to see that any steps to prevent this from happening would be worth taking?

Nonsense

Burnham's claque within the Labour Party, the same ones who stabbed Keir Starmer in the back, seem convinced that he's a brilliant communicator with the surest political instincts since Tony Blair.

That grizzled warmonger himself, perhaps growing fond in his dotage, laughably compares Burnham's 'people-person' skills to those of the lavishly empathetic Bill Clinton.

Well, put it this way: after the past few days, I have my doubts. Having swanned off on holiday barely two weeks into the job, he has been spamming social media with inane TikToks about whether he prefers pork scratchings to salt and vinegar crisps.

Meanwhile, a social and political crisis has been unfolding beneath his feet.

Let me be clear: if he doesn't get a grip of it, it will sink him – just as it did Starmer.

PC Harper (pictured with his wife Lissie) was 28 when he was killed in August 2019 after responding to reports of a stolen quad bike in Berkshire

Albert Bowers, left, and Jessie Cole, right, jailed for his manslaughter, would be eligible for early release this year after serving half their 13-year sentences

When Sir Keir arrived in Downing Street two years ago, swept to power on that historic – if notably 'loveless' – landslide, he immediately presided over a disaster of mass early prison releases, a scheme orchestrated by the current Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood in her former role at the Ministry of Justice.

The first weeks of Starmer's tenure were bedevilled by stomach-churning photographs of hardened criminals swaggering out of HMP Wandsworth, flicking obscene gestures at the cameras and swilling champagne before clambering into six-figure supercars and roaring off.

Those pictures helped shape Starmer's early premiership, and the perception it was not really he who was in charge, but a faceless, unelected and unaccountable cabal of lawyers and mandarins. Bluntly, he never recovered.

For Burnham, I predict the political fallout of early releases will be orders of magnitude worse. The public's patience for this kind of thing is exhausted.

In particular, right-thinking people are disgusted at the thought of PC Harper's thuggish killers, Jessie Cole and Albert Bowers, being released after serving just half of their already-inadequate 13-year sentences, handed down in 2020. Many found it inexplicable they were charged with manslaughter, not murder.

As readers well know, the newly married PC Harper, who was just 28, was killed while investigating the theft of a quad bike in Sulhamstead, Berkshire.

His feet became tangled in a towrope that was attached to a car in which Cole and Bowers were passengers, and he suffered unspeakable injuries while being dragged at speeds of more than 40mph for over a mile.

Nearly a million people have signed a petition organised by the Police Federation, demanding that Cole and Bowers' release be blocked.

That, I might add, is about 40 times more than voted Andy Burnham into Parliament for the seat of Makerfield – the flimsy basis of his premiership. Yet still the PM claims he cannot intervene.

On Monday, Downing Street said it 'pushed hard on what more we could do' but limply claimed it was impossible to exempt 'one or two offenders' from early release.

Last week Burnham even alleged that exempting criminals from the scheme would cause the prison system to collapse 'within months'.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham has approved a controversial prison release scheme to ease overcrowding in jails

That was patent nonsense. Rapists and child-sex offenders are already ineligible for early release following a huge public outcry.

Britain's prisons would hardly implode if a fresh exemption were created: for criminals convicted of the manslaughter of on-duty police officers or other emergency workers.

To my knowledge, Cole and Bowers are the only two such inmates in the entire estate.

The latest data shows 1,940 prison spaces currently available in England and Wales.

Again – and I speak as someone with a lifetime's experience working in the justice system – that is tight, I accept, but some way from collapse.

To state the obvious: no one is asking Parliament to rush through new legislation to impose a bespoke additional punishment on these two individuals.

But there is a vast difference between targeting specific people in that way and creating a rule to catch them.

Robust

Of course, this change to the law would require careful drafting. Fine. Those are the kind of choices ministers are paid to make.

They are not 'complete non-starters', as mandarins were leaking to the Press on Monday. Just because the lawyers might not like it, doesn't mean it's impossible.

Every serious policy choice carries risk. The job of a government or a prime minister is to assess, decide – and then legislate.

Our statute book does not exist to elevate the timid anxieties of Whitehall into ministerial vetoes. Had Starmer only grasped this, he might still be in No10.

Instead of finding reasons to justify the hated policy of slashing the sentences of criminals, Burnham should be pursuing every option to make our prison system more robust, both by increasing capacity and by using the cell space we already have far more intelligently.

Let me suggest a few obvious measures. The first is to remove women who have not committed violent offences.

Most females in jail are there because of the consequences of drug and alcohol addiction. They represent no great risk to the public.

I have argued for years that by changing the way we punish and rehabilitate non-violent female offenders, we could free enough personnel to staff a 600-bed prison.

Dartmoor prison, with another 600 cells, has been empty for years and its staff dispersed (while still paying enormous sums to the Duchy of Cornwall in rent)

Puppet

Dartmoor prison, with another 600 cells, has been empty for years and its staff dispersed (while still paying enormous sums to the Duchy of Cornwall in rent), all for want of a solution to deal with a radon gas problem that seems beyond the wit of HM Prison Service to fix.

Contrary to Reform's proposal on Monday to create more space by building emergency 'Nightingale' jails, we need to look at reopening other disused prisons – such as the derelict Camp Hill on the Isle of Wight.

New staff could be trained and deployed much more quickly in existing buildings, rather than everyone having to wait years for new facilities to be built.

In particular, Andy Burnham needs to shut his ears to the stale old prison-reform organisations, the woke criminal justice commentariat and the loony Left of his own party, noisily campaigning for mass 'emergency releases'.

And he has to show the British public immediately that he is not just another puppet of the invisible bureaucrats who pulled Keir Starmer's strings.

The Prime Minister says he is willing to 'explore every option' surrounding the release of PC Harper's killers.

But there's only one option that really matters: keep them in jail for every day of their sentences.

Only by doing so will he show us he's truly in charge.

Professor Ian Acheson is a former prison governor.