By Paul Goodman
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Let me start with a declaration of interest. Chris Grayling is an former Parliamentary colleague, a fellow member of the 2001 Commons intake and, I like to think, a friend. So there are my cards on the table. I used to watch him soon after we were first elected, seeking to get called to speak each afternoon in the Commons, trying to get in on almost every question. I wondered if he would burn himself out. He didn't, rising rapidly through the front bench ranks until he was made Shadow Home Secretary. For reasons that remain mysterious - at least to me - it didn't work out. I wondered if the demoted Grayling would ever make the Cabinet. He did, being appointed Justice Secretary at the last reshuffle. How is he doing now?
We meet in his Commons Office, set in one of the Ministerial corridors from which Conservatives were exiled for 13 years. Grayling looks reassuringly unexhausted and unchanged: rangy, wary, soft-spoken, occasionally searching for a word but never lacking a certain sense of purpose. Is it true that Theresa May, his working partner at the Home Office, said: "I lock them up, and Ken Clarke let them out. I lock them up, and Chris throws away the key"? "That was Damian Green," says Grayling, correcting me. "I think he was getting at the fact that I have arrived at the Justice Ministry with the intention of being a tough Justice Secretary, but I want to counter-balance that with a much smarter approach to rehabilitation."
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