If voters see PM as a bungler, there might be no way back

There can come a time in the life of any government when it lapses into a narrative whereby, from the most trivial of mishaps, a pattern of incompetence and failure emerges.

- SEAN O'GRADY

This seems to be happening to the Labour government and Keir Starmer's premiership tragically early.

It was he, after all, who told us he'd end the “chaos and confusion”. But, without trying too hard, it's easy to see how events of the past week have turned into a “one thing after another” story.

The release from prison by mistake of Hadush Kebatu is the most obvious component. The man that home secretary Shabana Mahmood rightly calls “a vile child sex offender” first came to prominence as an illegal migrant who went on to sexually assault a 14-year-old girl and a woman while living in an asylum hotel in Essex.

His eventual arrest in July had sparked protests outside Epping's Bell Hotel, which had been commandeered to accommodate asylum seekers including Kebatu. But some sort of justice was being done: he was sentenced to 12 months in prison, followed by deportation.

But, in the kind of mistake that happens too often in a system under strain, after a matter of weeks, he was mistakenly released from jail. Last year, there were 262 such blunders; none made the news, let alone dominated it.

His release prompted a 48-hour manhunt that ended with him being rearrested in north London - but not before a second-act farce in which Kebatu spent hours trying to get back into Chelmsford nick, not unlike the plot of a 1960s comedy caper starring Peter Sellers called Two-Way Stretch. Once recaptured he threatened to challenge his deportation - prompting him to be given a £500 bung to go back to Ethiopia.

The revelation that Kebatu was effectively paid to leave the country quietly was branded by the Conservatives as an “absolute disgrace”.