The argument in favour of capital punishment is not often made nowadays by senior politicians in this country, and for good reason. It has been 58 years since we abolished the death penalty, consigning it to the murky depths of mid-20th-century history, along with polio and pea-souper fogs.
The UK is also a signatory to the European convention of human rights, which in 1983 enacted protocol 6, which prohibits capital punishment in peacetime. The countries that are the most active executioners – China, Saudi Arabia, Iran – are hardly models of enlightened criminal justice. And on top of that, most Britons are opposed to the reintroduction of the death penalty.
