Mr Clarke has not apologised for his remarks in general, but he has written to a victim of attempted rape, who also featured on the show, saying: "I have always believed that all rape is extremely serious, and must be treated as such.

EM may be crap anyway but you are plain wrong on this. Clarke's comments exemplified many things that are wrong with men's attitudes to rape and sexual assault. This shouldn't be dismissed as a party political thing...

I'm sorry, but for the Justice Secretary to be so flippant when describing rape is unacceptable. There may well be some overreaction and indeed, there could also now be a problem with debating rape sentencing seriously but that has come about through the carelessness of no one but Ken Clarke.

I don't think Miliband's attack on Clarke at PMQs was a personal one - distasteful perhaps, but give me a politician who wouldn't want to hoof one into an open goal? Miliband managed to make the Tories look soft on crime. Judging by the reaction of the rightwing press today, I'd bet a pound or two that KC will be lucky to survive the reshuffle. Takes the heat out of Lansley anyhow.

I agree entirely with that blog post. Miliband has now placed himself in alliance with the right wing press and in opposition to criminal justice reforms that Labour should be supporting. It is a long-term strategic cost for an opportunistic, dubious, short-term gain.

Milliband will go down in the annals of UK parliamentary lore as being first and foremost a jobbing opportunist - when it's not AV, it's other personal "once in a life time opportunity to damage Clegg and the Liberals" type prognostications.

The man's a poltroon. And, he'll never be a Labour prime minister - even his own party know that he's merely a holding-pattern caretaker leader whilst they lick their post-Brown rejection wounds after the last general election.

I'm worried that it won't just make discussions on rape policy and sentencing more difficult. The emphasis on the "50% reduction for rapists who plead guilty" will call into question the whole "liberal" criminal justice policy which Clarke has been promoting, and which is one of the only things this rotten and arrogant government has done to its credit since it was elected. Sack Ken and it'll be stone dead. We'll have lost the best chance for many years of bringing some sense to the benighted and broken criminal justice system.

"But his blunder was at least inadvertent... "

So that's all right then?

Well, I don't think so.