The results are in from the “Listeners’ Law” feature on BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme, where the show’s audience chose between five bills, with Labour MP Stephen Pound agreeing to propose the winner in Parliament. More than 25,000 people voted. The winner was a “proposal to authorise homeowners to use any means to defend their home from intruders.” It won with 37% of the vote.

Pound clearly had been bargaining for something a bit more enlightened. Press commentators have been smirking at his subsequent discomfort, but his immediate response assures him a place in future anthologies of political quotations. “The People have spoken,” he said, “the bastards.”

The runner-up proposal was of interest to me professionally. It was a “presumed consent” law for organ procurement, i.e., “A Bill to allow the use of all organs for transplant after death unless the individual has ‘opted out’ and recorded that opt out on an organ transplant register.” The synergistic benefits of combining this proposal and the winning candidate into an omnibus package don’t seem to have been discussed. Nevertheless, the presumed consent idea beat out three proposals, namely, “A Bill to ban smoking in all workplaces, to include bars and restaurants,” Prime-Ministerial term limits and compulsory voting, and “Ban all Christmas advertising and the erection of municipal street decorations before 1st December.”