After covering Wes Streeting’s second job hypocrisy on Monday, and Rachel Reeves’s yesterday, Guido wasn’t going to bother covering David Lammy’s turn to stand in for James O’Brien on LBC, given he’s already covered the shadow foreign secretary’s second earnings hypocrisy in detail previously. Unlike his fellow shadow cabinet stand-ins, however, it was the content of Lammy’s show that caught Guido’s attention. One caller – Laura, a teacher from Kettering – bravely called in to articulate her view that Rishi and Boris haven’t done anything wrong:

“Lammy: I hope you tell your pupils to follow the rules, and I hope you’ll understand that the police – not me, the police – have found Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak guilty, the police have issued the 50 fixed penalty notices.
Laura: And do you know why the police probably would have done that? Because of all the pressure put on them! If you look at this logically….
Lammy: Oh! Laura! Laura! Laura! Let’s be clear on this! The police didn’t want to investigate! The police were dragged to investigate this because of the work of The Mirror! And the wonderful work of the journalist Pippa Crerar! They didn’t want to investigate this! 
…
Lammy: Laura, Laura, you’re a teacher in a secondary school, do you know what’s going on in your class? 
Laura: Of course I do
Lammy: Of course you do. Do you know what’s going on in your home? 
Laura: Of course I do 
Lammy: Then why do you think Boris Johnson doesn’t know what’s going on in his?!
Laura: Because… I truly believe when…
Lammy: Laura, what do you teach in our secondary schools because this is perplexing this morning… 
Laura: I’m not going to obviously tell you what I teach but you asked me a question whether I believe Rishi Sunak and Boris Johnson should resign and I think they shouldn’t. 
Lammy: Laura thank you for your views but I’m jolly pleased you don’t teach my kids I’ve got to tell you!”

A few minutes later another caller, an NHS worker Joanna, was so incensed by Lammy’s treatment of Laura she called in to accuse him of bullying her

“Hello, first of all I just want to say I thought you were really rude to the teacher who spoke to you some minutes ago, I though it was extremely rude to say you wouldn’t want her to teach your children that is really unacceptable.”

“I worked in a hospital, in intensive care, we would come out several hours after being in full PPE, like being in a space suite… if it happened to be any of my colleague’s birthday and there happened to be some biscuits and some diet coke to share during our break, I mean would that be called a party? Or a rave? Or what?”

10 minutes later, Lammy doubled down further by suggesting Laura may have been lying about being a teacher in the first place

Guido preferred pre-Brexit Lammy, who tweeted “Britain’s teachers deserve much more gratitude and respect.” What changed?