David Lammy’s bottom lip curled upwards and outwards. He looked like a circus clown doing his best sad face. He was sitting on the front bench of the House of Commons, knowing that in a minute he was going to have to get very angry indeed, but would anyone really believe him?

The thing he was going to have to get angry about was the accidental release from prison of Hadush Kebatu. Should you need a quick recap, Kebatu is an Ethiopian man who came to the UK on a rubber dinghy. He was put up for free in a hotel in Essex and repaid his host nation’s generosity by trying to kiss a schoolgirl on a bench in Epping High Street.

There were waves of national protest. Kebatu would claim, in court, that the adult woman who had intervened to stop him trying to kiss the schoolgirl had only done so because she found him “handsome” and wanted to take him back to her house instead. With stunning predictability, this “defence” ended with him being sent to prison for sexual assault, from where, in the craziest plot twist of all, he was then accidentally released, causing yet more national uproar, particularly when it became known that he’d asked, five times, to be allowed to go back to prison but no one listened.

• The Sunday Times View: Migrant’s escape is symptom of trouble in jails and beyond

How can you possibly stand up in the House of Commons and, with a straight face, get angry about that? Without wishing to downplay the severity of the crimes involved or the suffering of his victims, every other part of the plot feels as if it has been lifted from a zany screwball comedy starring Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor.

How can anyone lose their temper in the face of a farce as intricately woven as this one? Getting indignant about Kebatu’s accidental prison break is like shouting in the face of Basil Fawlty. You’re only going to make yourself look even more ridiculous — which is, of course, exactly what David Lammy did.

The justice secretary rose to his feet. He fixed his eyes on an invisible dot on the far wall and allowed the words written on the paper in front of him to exit his lips. “I would like to make a statement on the release, in error, of Hamish Kebatu in error from HMP Chelmsford,” he said, arriving instantly in a place far beyond parody. “He is back where he belongs: behind bars.”

The tough talk was mesmerising. He almost seemed to be imagining himself, with complete sincerity, as a grizzled old cop from a US crime drama. Back behind bars? How can you possibly say these words in the full knowledge that Kebatu’s 48 hours of freedom were forced upon him against his will and were mostly spent banging on a cold prison door, begging for his own reincarceration?

• Epping migrant ‘confused and asking officers for help’ before release

Lammy announced that the incident would now be subject to what he called a “full, independent investigation by Dame Lynne Owens, who will fully establish the facts of Kebatu’s release”. Lammy suggested the investigation may wish to look at “whether staff had sufficient training”.

Owens is a former director general of the National Crime Agency. She is a formidable operator. One has to wonder how she feels about suggestions that she will investigate whether staff had had sufficient training to deal with a prisoner, banging on the door of a prison, shouting that he’d been let out by mistake. How “full” does the investigation need to be?

It was only after the shadow justice secretary, Robert Jenrick, had a go that Lammy fully lost it. “Dear oh dear, where to begin?” were Jenrick’s opening words. You could almost see the wound open up. This knowingly patronising attack is the prime minister’s favourite. When it comes back at you, it really hurts. “This justice secretary couldn’t deport the only small boat migrant who wanted to be deported,” he said. “He came back to prison, asking to be deported, not once, not twice, but five times. He was turned away.”

Lammy did what they all do in these circumstances. He made a real show of himself by cracking up laughing. Footballers do the same thing all the time. They laugh in the face of the referee who has quite rightly sent them off. It’s a futile attempt to reassert some sort of power and control when you’re out of your depth and entirely bang to rights.

Then things took a turn for the wild. It was Ronald Reagan who once said: “When you’re explaining, you’re losing.” Lammy wasn’t explaining. He was simply shouting out a list of other wrongly released prisoners, on the last government’s watch, as if that somehow made things better. He’d taken a backwards step from the despatch box, too, and planted both elbows down upon it, leaning forward like a heavyweight boxer. He jabbed his biro with relentless force, as if seeking to rain down the last volley of punches that would end the contest, but it got him nowhere.

It felt like an angry version of that famous swimming pool security guard sketch in which Steve Coogan slowly lists the years in which no one died. “In 2021, there was William Ferandez, wrongly released from Wormwood Scrubs, who went on to reoffend!” In 2022, there was the incident with the pigeon.

Later, the justice secretary would find himself blaming the accidental liberation of the UK’s most notorious inmate on poor-quality wifi across the prison network. Naturally, he blamed the last government’s cuts to the prison budget, which his government is reversing. “There will be more people in prison at the end of this parliament than ever before,” he said at one point, inadvertently setting quite possibly the most bizarre target in British political history. What happens when they’re on course to miss it? It doesn’t bear thinking about.

Still, it was an enjoyable return to politics as ritualistic public humiliation. It’s no way to run a country, but it’s quite good fun. Mercifully, despite no evidence of good behaviour or contrition, Lammy was released after about 45 minutes. Don’t worry, he’ll be back.