For Downing Street technicians, another disappointing day. They had again fitted the hypersonic Lammy to their launch pad and topped its liquid oxygen levels. ‘Three, two, one… blast-off!’
In the first seconds all seemed okay. A roar of noise. Heavy vibrations as superchargers fired and the launch cradle fell away. Then… an unexpected deviation from the route, a puff of oily smoke and a loop-the-loop before pieces of nose-cone started to shoot off at terrible angles. The Lammy exploded.
‘My znaem eto chuvstvo’ came a message of solidarity from Yasny launch site in Orenburg Oblast, south Russia, where a similar mishap occurred this week to V. Putin’s latest missile. ‘Ve know ze feelink.’
Downing Street is not having much luck. The Budget, small boats, Chagos Isles, anything to do with Lord Hermer, Net Zero, ID cards, welfare spending, schools funding: rocket after rocket has burst into flames. David Lammy’s mission yesterday was to promote the latest brainwave, the cutting back of jury trials. And so he toured the morning TV and radio shows. They were keener to talk to him about prisons and a hapless Lammy was obliged to admit that two more convicts were at large.
At lunchtime our hero came whooshing into the Commons to make a parliamentary statement. If the idea was for Labour MPs to cheer the policy, it went phut. Several basically said they would sooner boil their eyeballs. Mr Lammy said the Victims’ Commissioner supported the proposal. A Tory MP rose to make a point of order: the Victims’ Commissioner had, er, died a few weeks ago. Eek.
Robert Jenrick, shadow secretary of state, noted Mr Lammy used to pose as a proud defender of jury trials. ‘Will the real David Lammy please stand up?’
Jogging freak Jenrick is now so slender that he has lost some of the physical bulk you ideally need if you are going to be quite so bracingly combative. But he had fun, all the same, marvelling that ‘the Lammy dodger’ had finally come to the chamber himself rather than sending a deputy. ‘He’s been a man on the run,’ squeaked Mr Jenrick, who also compared Mr Lammy to bad King John.
So far, arguably, so routine. More problematic for Downing Street was turbulence on the government side. Diane Abbott (Ind, Hackney N) quoted the pro-jury principles of a certain Sir Keir Starmer KC. Clive Efford (Lab, Eltham and Chislehurst) feared that entrusting more verdicts to posh judges would create ‘us and them’ antipathy. Richard Burgon (Lab, Leeds E) observed that no government should assume it will be in power forever, and what would happen if Reform won office and changed the laws? Might Mr Lammy not then miss juries?
Plenty of other Labour MPs raised further objections but no one made the point that if you want to speed up the courts you could ask paid-by-the-hour lawyers not to waste so much time. Mr Lammy said that the trial of an alleged bicycle thief could take two days. Would two hours not suffice?
We had, said Mr Lammy, ‘world-beating judges’. His fellow minister Sarah Sackman nodded vigorously. Hang on. She’s married to a judge!
The Lammy proposals sprang from a report by Sir Brian Leveson, ‘one of the foremost judges of his generation’. From what I recall, he may be less revered for his love of free speech. We were not told how much Sir Brian was being paid for his time but his report looked sumptuously thick, and he’s only half-way through his golden deliberations.
We close with a newsflash from Debbie Abrahams (Lab, Oldham E) that next Wednesday is International Human Rights Day and she is having a peace vigil. Debbie, who is not the most scintillating of souls, invited foreign office ministers to attend her vigil. Handsome Hamish Falconer had to answer. ‘I will do my utmost,’ he gulped, before adding, treacherously, ‘as I am sure other ministers will.’
Yvette Cooper shot him the filthiest look.
