Another day of administrative imperturbability from our purring Lagonda of a government.
In the Commons David Lammy, Deputy PM and Justice Secretary, was fighting to save his career after the Epping sex offender was accidentally released from prison.
Mr Lammy’s eyes bulged, astonished he should be facing criticism. He slapped the despatch box, grabbed a ballpoint pen and nursed it in his right fingers, as if he might throw it at any moment at his Tory opponent, Robert Jenrick. A dart, right between Jenrick’s dancing eyes. Whereupon Speaker Hoyle would shout: ‘One hundred and eighty!’
Mr Lammy had already had a vexing time with his British Legion poppy. It was one of those metal ones and Mr Lammy was all fingers and thumbs as he struggled to click the back piece in place. A little prick. No, no, I mean that was what he suffered from the poppy’s pin.
Junior minister Jake Richards, aged c.22, was also having poppy trouble. His fell off. Mr Richards was more worried about the front of his hairdo. Kept fiddling with it.
Mr Lammy described how sex offender Hadush Kebatu was let go – doh! - from HMP Chelmsford (now there’s the prison to request when we all get banged up for failing to pay our mansion tax). Lammy’s voice went all whispery as he related this magnificent foul-up. And it was ‘Mr Kebatu’, please. Since when did we start giving convicts honorifics?
Mr Lammy: ‘I’m livid.’ The House laughed. Now that really did make him cross.
Kebatu was ‘released into the community’. Soon ‘concerns were raised’, ie prison officers started yowling F-words once they realised such a politically toxic prisoner was ‘no longer in the vicinity’ (translation: had legged it).
Mr Lammy, summoning all his gravitas: ‘There must and there will be accountability.’ The words ‘once we’ve worked out who’s expendable’ did not need to be uttered. It certainly wasn’t going to be him! Or was it? The small number of Labour MPs in the chamber looked distinctly unamused.
Mr Lammy had ‘tasked’ officials. He had ‘been clear it was unacceptable’. Then he hurried through some statistics for how many prisoners had been accidentally let out in recent months. It’s amazing there’s anyone left inside.
Mr Lammy only came to life when he started blaming the Tories. His voice went squeaky and he leaned on the despatch box, pushing a good 12 inches across the table. Mr Jenrick was soon saying ‘Calamity Lammy strikes again’. Mr Lammy laughed theatrically but when he leapt back to reply he was SEETHING, his voice now near castrato. ‘This is a serious issue!!!’ he yelled, brandishing his right index finger, throwing his notes aside.
The Lib Dems’ frontbencher was wet as a sardine. Mr Lammy ‘thanked her for her tone’. That meant ‘thank you for not attacking me’. Another Lib Dem, some goose from Honiton, talked of Kebatu’s ‘escape’. A Tory MP: ‘They let him out!’ Meanwhile, MPs and peers opened a committee investigation of another prize bungle – the China ‘spies’ case. Chief prosecutor Stephen Parkinson and another government lawyer made plain that the Attorney General, Lord Hermer, was kept informed before the case collapsed.
Then the deputy national security adviser (current man in the mire) strode into the room. A limber gait but a David Beckham voice. Tremulous thumbs. Twitchy, too. When listening to questions he recoiled his head and worked his eyebrows like Capt Darling from TV’s Blackadder. Beside him was the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Chris Wormald, victim of recent bitching by ‘friends of the Prime Minister’.
He walks these days with a heavy trudge. Looked a bit red round the eyes, as if he had been blubbing. He elongates and gives strange emphasis to certain vowels. You can see how it could annoy a pressurised PM.
Sir Chris, too, has developed a twitch: one of those Mr-MacKay-from-Porridge jobs, where his entire neck convulses and dips.
Is there anyone at the top of this Government entirely sane at present?
