Welcome to the latest installment of ‘Performative Competence,’ a long-running British sitcom where politicians pretend the rudder is still attached to the ship of state. This week’s episode features David Lammy, a man whose political career resembles a slow-motion game of Tetris, stepping into the breach to block the transfer of Jake Fahri to an open prison. Fahri, for those with shorter memories than a goldfish, is the individual who, in a 2008 display of peak human evolutionary failure, murdered Jimmy Mizen over a triviality in a bakery. Now, after sixteen years of taxpayer-funded reflection, the Ministry of Justice has decided that the ‘public protection’ requires Fahri to stay behind the big, scary walls instead of the slightly smaller, more decorative walls of an open prison.

One must admire the sheer, unadulterated gall of the Ministry of Justice—a title that remains the funniest joke in the English language—using the phrase ‘public protection’ with a straight face. This is the same government department currently overseeing a system so bloated and decrepit that it is literally vomiting prisoners back onto the streets weeks or months early just to prevent the Victorian plumbing from finally surrendering. We are living through a period where the state is essentially running a ‘buy one, get one free’ sale on early release for thousands of criminals because they forgot to build enough cages, yet we are expected to applaud when they manage to keep one high-profile villain from getting a garden pass. It is the judicial equivalent of a man trying to stop a flood with a single, branded Post-it note.

David Lammy’s intervention here is a masterpiece of cynical theatricality. By blocking the move of a ‘name brand’ killer like Fahri, the administration secures a cheap headline that screams ‘Tough on Crime’ to the dwindling number of citizens who still believe the news. It is a calculated distraction from the systemic rot. The public, a collective of easily startled sheep currently grazing on the scorched earth of their own failing infrastructure, is meant to feel safer because one specific boogeyman isn’t allowed to walk to a library unescorted. Never mind the 1,700 other inmates who were ushered out of the front gates recently to make room for the next batch of inevitable failures. Those 1,700 aren’t as useful for a press release, you see. They are just the background noise of a collapsing society.

Let’s analyze the concept of the ‘open prison’ itself—a term that suggests we’ve simply given up on the concept of walls and replaced them with the honor system. To explain an open prison to an external observer would be to admit that the entire penal philosophy is a farce. ‘We have them in a cage because they are dangerous, but eventually, we put them in a cage with no locks to see if they’ve learned their lesson.’ It is the ultimate participation trophy of the judicial system. The fact that the Parole Board initially recommended Fahri’s move suggests that even the ‘experts’ are bored of the charade and just want to clear some desk space. But Lammy knows better—or rather, he knows the optics are better if he says no. In the world of the career politician, a victim’s family’s grief is a resource to be mined for a three-day news cycle.

The Mizen case was a tragedy, certainly, but it was also a testament to the mindless brutality of the species. A disagreement in a shop transformed into a slaughter because humanity is, at its core, a collection of territorial apes with access to glassware. The state’s role is supposed to be the imposition of order upon this chaos, but instead, we get David Lammy playing the role of the stern sentinel. It is a pathetic display of selective morality. If the government were truly concerned with ‘public protection,’ they wouldn’t be in a position where they have to choose which monsters to keep and which to release based on cell availability and Twitter trends.

Ultimately, whether Fahri is in a closed prison, an open prison, or a bouncy castle in the middle of Whitehall is irrelevant to the broader arc of British decay. The prison is on the outside. The public is trapped in a loop of performative outrage and bureaucratic flatulence, governed by people who treat justice like a PR campaign. Lammy’s block isn’t an act of strength; it’s a desperate attempt to look busy while the walls crumble. We are expected to be grateful for this crumb of ‘safety’ while the bakery itself is on fire. It is exhausting, it is transparent, and it is exactly what we deserve for continuing to buy tickets to this dismal show.