David Lammy denies reality and vilifies opponents - yet he has Keir Starmer's protection

Keir Starmer absolutely cannot afford to lose another deputy prime minister but the country cannot afford to keep him. David Lammy's cringeworthy Commons outing was so bad his colleagues have now viciously turned on him, leaving his future in doubt. The Justice Secretary has been accused of "cowardice" for the hit and run performance where he refused to answer questions about the mistaken release of Algerian sex offender Brahim Kaddour-Cherif from Wandsworth prison.

Lammy left a junior minister to clean up his mess, sending out Alex Davis-Jones to explain the situation instead of facing up to the problem himself. Other senior ministers and government sources have criticised his lack of judgment, aggression and rank incompetence. All were anonymous but Thangam Debbonaire, a Labour peer, publicly went for him, accusing Lammy of being "uncollegiate".

She told Times Radio: "I think it's important to be out front and centre defending yourself and your own department. And I'm not that impressed that he sent Alex Davis-Jones out to bat for him. I think Alex did a valiant job, but she was put in a very difficult position and I don't think that's a great idea and I don't think it's a great look.

"And I think David's more than capable of answering for himself. I really wish that's what he'd done."

As Boris Johnson said when he was ousted, "the herd instinct is powerful" in Westminster and "when the herd moves, it moves".

But Calamity Lammy has one powerful protector - Keir Starmer. The pair are close friends but more importantly, the Prime Minister will do everything possible not to lose another deputy just a couple of months after the last one was forced out. After all his promises of stability and integrity, giving up a dozen ministers in just a little over a year would be hugely damaging.

But Starmer only has himself to blame as the signs Lammy would implode have been there for all to see.

It's easy to mock. There's the embarrassing appearance on Celebrity Mastermind where he scored just 13 points after a series of howlers, including answering "Which variety of blue English cheese traditionally accompanies port?" with the response "Red Leicester".

There's the time he was railing against the lack of police on the streets during a live television interview while an officer was standing right behind him.

There's the time he apologised after tweeting at the BBC "Do we really need silly innuendo about the race of the next Pope?" when it had questioned "will smoke be black or white?" when a new Pontiff was being chosen.

All very silly and embarrassing but pretty trivial. Far more important is the way he denies reality and vilifies opponents.

Lammy believes men can grow a cervix and turn into women. He said: "I understand that a cervix is something you can have after various procedures, hormone treatment, all the rest of it."

Women pointing out that men can never sex regardless of any procedures they have had were not listened to respectfully but torn apart.

Lammy told Labour activists that calls for men to be kept out of women's spaces were down to "some dinosaurs on the right" and also that "those dinosaurs exist in our own party". He went on to say that those women wanted to "hoard rights" and has never withdrawn his comments.

Lammy is now in charge of a prison system that as of last month still had men housed in women's jails. Can women trust him to have their best interests at heart?

When it comes to democracy, he's also not that keen on the outcomes the British public have delivered in recent years. He decided the votes of 17 million people for Britain's departure were wrong so he campaigned for a second referendum.

When Conservative MPs in the European Research Group pushed for a clean Brexit, he compared them to Nazis and proponents of South African apartheid. Asked later if he regretted the comments, he doubled down, insisting his words were "not strong enough".

When it was pointed out they democratically elected MPs, he replied: "I don't care how elected they were: so was the far right in Germany."

His Commons meltdown showed either contempt for the democratic process or incompetence. Either option is terrifying when you consider this is the man who takes charge if for any reason the Prime Minister cannot.

The public deserves better, but as is ever with this woeful Labour government, who comes next could be even worse.