that margin might be, and as being incompatible with article 3 of Protocol No 1.” 134. Scoppola v Italy (No 3) (2012) 56 EHRR 663 was directly concerned with the automatic lifetime exclusion from the franchise which was the consequence under Italian law of the imposition of a sentence of life imprisonment. However, the United Kingdom rule was indirectly in question, because the Grand Chamber reviewed the decision in Hirst and the British government intervened to make submissions about it. The Chamber had held that the Italian rule violated article 3 of the First Protocol because of its automatic character. The Grand Chamber held that it was compatible with the Convention. It found that the rule pursued the legitimate aim of “preventing crime and enhancing civil responsibility and respect for the rule of law” (para 90). Turning to proportionality, it held that notwithstanding the statements in Hirst the test of proportionality did not require that disenfranchisement should be discretionary. It could be automatic, provided that the principles governing its imposition were sufficiently related to the gravity of the offence. The provisions of the relevant Italian law were held to be proportionate, unlike the English rule, because they disenfranchised only those convicted of particularly serious offences and those sentenced to the longer terms of imprisonment. Subject to the point about the absence of judicial discretion, the Grand Chamber reaffirmed the decision in Hirst. 135. Accordingly, the Strasbourg Court has arrived at a very curious position. It has held that it is open to a Convention state to fix a minimum threshold of gravity which warrants the disenfranchisement of a convicted person. It has held that the threshold beyond which he will be disenfranchised may be fixed by law by reference to the nature of the sentence. It has held that disenfranchisement may be automatic, once a sentence above that threshold has been imposed. But it has also held that even with the wide margin of appreciation allowed to Convention states in this area, it is not permissible for the threshold for disenfranchisement to correspond with the threshold for imprisonment. Wherever the threshold for imprisonment is placed, it seems to have been their view that there must always be some offences which are serious enough to warrant imprisonment but not serious enough to warrant disenfranchisement. Yet the basis of this view is nowhere articulated. It might perhaps have been justified by a careful examination of the principles of sentencing in the United Kingdom, with a view to demonstrating that they involve the imprisonment of some categories of people for offences so trivial that one could not rationally suppose them to warrant disenfranchisement. That would be an indictment not just of the principle of disenfranchisement but of the sentencing principles themselves. However, no such exercise appears to have been carried out. 136. I confess that I also find it surprising that the Strasbourg Court should have concluded in Hirst that the United Kingdom Parliament adopted the present rule Page 62