'He is a bum and a wicked man who brings shame on your country': Inside David Lammy's seven-hour taxi ride from hell as French driver claims he was slapped, abused... and what he says Deputy PM's wife did.
Few among David Lammy’s many critics will have savoured the details of his calamitous week with quite as much relish as a certain French taxi driver.
‘Oh dear, it is scandal after scandal with your Deputy Prime Minister,’ says Nassim Mimun, shaking his head in mock disapproval while reading his newspaper, La Provence. Mr Lammy’s mishaps, it turns out, are newsworthy in the south of France as well as Britain.
‘Your minister is a bum... Lammy brings great shame on your country, but I’m glad he’s in trouble because he is a shameful, wicked man,’ adds Mr Mimun.
Having made rather a chump of himself in the Commons over prisoner release bungles, Mr Lammy is feeling the heat. Pressure keeps mounting, criticism remains intense. ‘Cowardly’ was one description of his behaviour – and that was from a Cabinet colleague.
Yet Mr Mimun’s words stand out as particularly harsh. That’s because it is personal with the driver and the minister. They have history. Mr Mimun claims Mr Lammy ruined his life.
It all goes back to the early hours of April 11, at a mountain resort in the French Alps, when the two men argued bitterly over a taxi fare after a seven-hour journey from Italy.
That much is undisputed. Untangling the criss-crossing claims surrounding the 360-mile trip and its aftermath, some involving Mr Lammy’s wife, Nicola Green, is another matter.
During the altercation over the fare, Mr Mimun says the then Foreign Secretary, sitting behind him, punched or kicked the back of his seat, shouted about the ******* French’ and slapped his neck. ‘He was going crazy,’ says Mr Mimun.
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