“You couldn’t make it up,” will be a phrase many Brits have groaned during the relentless barrage of vacuous vandalism our nation has suffered since Labour took office. So mad are their decisions and mistakes that it feels like real-world politics have exceeded even the most unhinged visions of our most ambitious satirists. And yet a more appropriate motto for our trials under Sir Keir Starmer might be “you wouldn’t make it up”.

Because why would any critic of this government bother? Seriously, why make anything up about our leaders when almost daily we are subjected to news that beggars belief? Right-wing hacks may as well get down the Job Centre as the combination of AI and Labour’s missteps will surely render journalists obsolete.

But until the Daily Express sees the light and lets AI collate a list of Labour lunacy that condemns the party more than any rhetoritician could, let’s look together at the Government’s latest stupidity.

As I write, an Algerian 24-year-old, suspected to be a sex offender, is at large after being released from jail by mistake. If you think you’re suffering from deja vu, you’re not, it’s just that this idiocy is starkly similar to another story from all the way back in… oh wait.

It was just 11 days ago that the Metroplitan Police was yet against forced to debase itself by begging a sexual predator to hand himself into custody like a good boy.

That pervert was called Hadush Kebatu, was an Ethiopian national and had come to our country illegally by way of the English Channel.

He had whinged that he wanted to be deported during his trial, where he was convicted of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl.

When he was finally caught, again, the Government paid £500 to deport him.

There’s something especially bitter about this for voters who have consistently requested that those we privelege with high office reduce legal migration to the UK.

Not only have Tory and Labour PMs not listened, they’ve done the exact opposite and increased legal migration. And as a bonus we now suffer unprecedented illegal migration across the Channel too.

It’s not just that Labour haven’t tackled this. They removed the Tories‘ attempt to do so by scrapping the Rwanda processing scheme.

Sir Keir Starmer would have spoken more honestly on the campaign trail had he said: “We won’t stop the boats. Sex offenders will enter this country. We won’t guarantee the safety of girls.”

Then there’s the grooming gangs inquiry. Labour publicly resisted calls for a national inquiry. Sir Keir accused Kemi Badenoch of jumping on a (cue scary music) “FAR-RIGHT BANDWAGON”.

Then, fresh from insulting ordinary citizens who think rape’s bad, he caved in and allowed one to go ahead. He’d allowed himself to be portrayed as dismissive of these concerns, only to then hope voters would believe he cared.

And so rape victims hoped to work with the Government to address decades of sexual abuse up and down the country carried out predominantly by Pakistani-heritage Brits.

They finally hoped for an end to politicians gaslighting them and an end to the prioritisation of anti-racist credentials over stopping the rape of children who had the misfortune to be white and working class.

They wanted an investigation of cover-ups that allowed this to happen.

So naturally three rape survivors ended up ceasing their co-operation citing concerns that Jess Phillips – the SAFEGUARDING minister – was overseeing a proces that felt like… a cover-up.

Maybe it’s the public that are the problem. Maybe Labour are just misunderstood. Maybe voters were wrong to take promises at face-value and feel fury when they were broken.

Which brings me to the Chancellor. We were promised no rise in income tax. But it was stressed Rachel Reeves would take tough decisions to fix the foundations. Now she says she’s fixed the foundations, courtesy of a disastrous budget in which she taxed employment, and yet she’s all but explicitly preparing us for income tax rises.

What are we missing? Is the Labour Party not a political outfit in the normal sense, but some sort of experimental theatre group that stages performances of not-to-be-taken-literally dialogue then carries out its actual policy?

When they said they’d smash the gangs trafficking migrants illegally to our shores, was that some sort of ironic comedy sketch?

Such behaviour would certainly explain how David “I haven’t seen a police” Lammy is now Deputy Prime Minister. But the thing about jokes is that they’re designed to illicit a laugh from the audience.

I do laugh at Labour sometimes – my personal highlight has been Rachel Reeves’s collapsing CV – but mainly I just see my country falling apart and a bunch of clowns crushing its broken pieces into smaller shards as they oafishly dance on what remains.