I have in my somewhat exotic record collection a curious disc cut by The Sex Pistols in 1978 entitled No one is innocent. It features a guest appearance by Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs, and though I have not listened to it for 30 years I can still remember the chorus: ‘Ronnie Biggs was doing time, till he done a bunk, now he says he’s seen the light, and he’s sold his soul for punk.’ They don’t make them like that anymore.

I don’t expect Jack Straw, 32 at the time and therefore a little old for leather and safety pins, rushed down to HMV for a copy, and I bet he’s never even heard of it. But the attitude manifested therein surely explains Straw’s decision to overrule the Parole Board and keep the 79-year-old Biggs behind bars.

Biggs, never more than a small-time south London criminal until the ‘big one’, has paid a heavy price for repeatedly embarrassing the establishment following his prison escape in 1965. Now almost completely incapacitated, he has served nearly a decade of his original sentence. It is pretty much inconceivable that he presents any risk to the public. Does it matter that he’s unrepentant? He surely hasn’t long to live and should be released.

Or so I thought. But am I a handwringing do-gooder, talking liberal tosh? A quick straw poll of my Gazette colleagues suggests that maybe I am. They point out that the gang attacked the train driver with an iron bar; he never returned to work and died seven years later without making a full recovery. ‘Biggs is low life, let him rot,’ says one.

Perhaps she’s right. Nevertheless, it is difficult to view Straw’s decision as anything other than cynical in its political opportunism. Would Biggs still be in jail if he’d participated in a robbery that no one now remembers, rather than the most infamous robbery in British criminal history? I strongly suspect not. His ‘celebrity criminal’ status has done for him.

Or has it. Even Reggie Kray – a much bigger fish than Biggs and a convicted murderer – was released to die; and he was certainly unrepentant. Indeed, it was Straw who released him.

Age has not mellowed the justice secretary, we can at least agree on that I think.