In recent months, a certain nostalgic yearning for the gallows has been flickering through Britain's rightwing political class, like a bad smell that simply won't leave the room. The leader of Restore Britain, Rupert Lowe, has made a manifesto commitment to holding a legally binding referendum on bringing back capital punishment. Not to be outdone, Reform MP Lee Anderson is also in favour of a referendum, arguing that the public would vote in favour of the death penalty.

Such supporters of capital punishment in Britain point to polls such as this "bombshell survey" that supposedly showed 47% of students favoured bringing back the death penalty. But these headlines are misleading, as surveys rarely include details about the grim administration of capital punishment and only present a binary choice of the options.

Enter Christa Pike, whose harrowing botched execution serves as a timely reminder of why we must not even entertain the idea of restoring capital punishment. Maya Foa, CEO of the human rights charity Reprieve, makes the case that the actual mechanics of state killing - the bungled lethal injections, the prolonged agony, the sheer administrative incompetence - tend to get lost in the abstract cheerleading. It's easy to support the death penalty in a survey; it's rather harder to watch it go wrong in real time.