David Lammy has 1 job at PMQs - to apologise for his appalling behaviour

Humour comes in many forms, yet it's probably fair to say that the topic of child sex offenders is not really fecund ground for belly laughs. Tough going even for Jimmy Carr one might think. And yet just days ago David Lammy, your Deputy Prime Minister remember, was sitting on the House of Commons' famous front benches laughing like a drain as what should have been the deeply troubling matter of Hadush Kebatu was debated.

Kebatu, you may recall, was the migrant sex offender jailed after sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl and a woman while living in an asylum hotel in Epping, Essex. He then single-handedly shamed Britain in the eyes of the world after he was wrongly freed by bungling prison staff. Apparently he begged to be let back into HMP Chelmsford but was told to do one.

He was also, as an aside, bunged £500 of your money on re-arrest to leave the country quietly.

A nasty, horrible man then, who has no doubt devastated the lives of at least two women, one a child.

Not many laughs there really are there?

And yet, as YouTube and X etc will now recall forever, there was Lammy laughing uproariously as shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick understandably berated Labour for the truly appalling cock-up.

Now then. Lammy will be taking PMQs today in the absence of Keir Starmer who is en route to that spectacularly pointless and self serving greenwashing affair that is the Cop30 climate conference in Brazil.

By jet plane naturally.

His bungling deputy (I know, I should program AI to stick the word "bungling" in front of every Labour MP of any note) has understandably garnered the ire of many on social media for his horribly inappropriate behaviour in the Commons over Kebatu.

Is it too much to expect an apology?

If not to the House then at least to the two victims?

He must surely have known his error because when he dragged himself to his feet he told Members "this is a serious matter".

None more serious, my old son.

Which is why us voters might have expected a little dignity and decency.

Instead we got the playground politics which we - the voters - are all so bone-deeply sick and tired of.

"Well we might be useless but what about you?" is a precis of just about every Labour argument.

(We know the last lot were useless, that's why we voted them out, remember?)

This Labour brand of playground politics is tiresome, it is purile, it insults the voters and no-one outside of the Westminster bubble buys it for one second.

Apologies from this lot?

You'd have more chance of a Rachel Reeves tax cut.