Hollow apologies abound in public life – and last week there was a prime example from Scotland’s virtue-signalling police chief.
Jo Farrell said she was sorry for ‘recent and historical injustices’ suffered by ‘lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning, and intersex’ people.
Last year her predecessor Sir Iain Livingstone branded his own force institutionally racist and discriminatory in an extraordinary act of self-sabotage (shortly before retiring).
Police Scotland officers were said to be furious over Chief Constable Jo Farrell’s apology, issued on social media last week
Rank-and-file cops – those who remain after huge cuts to their numbers – and retired top brass are furious at Ms Farrell’s statement.
Bigots
They had been effectively labelled as bigots by Sir Iain, a judgment immediately backed up by Ms Farrell when she replaced him last October, and now implicitly she’s adding homophobia to the list of her officers’ sins – or that’s the perception among many disillusioned bobbies.
But politicians and public sector bosses have grown used to expressing heartfelt contrition for past wrongs for which they weren’t responsible – hoping for good publicity.
As Sir Iain discovered, it doesn’t always work like this with the police watchdog saying potential recruits had withdrawn their applications after his bombshell racism claim, which left many officers feeling ‘disenchanted’.
Ms Farrell’s statement came out of the blue on social media, with a lot less fanfare than Sir Iain’s high-profile claim of institutional racism.
Frankly, her apology doesn’t make much sense because she’s saying sorry for laws the police didn’t formulate – that’s not their job.
Roddy Dunlop, dean of the Faculty of Advocates, pointed out last week that the Chief Constable’s words were ‘well-meaning, no doubt; and no doubt there have been bigots in the police’.
But he highlighted that she was ‘apologising for past laws’, and ‘however reprehensible those laws are to 2024 eyes, the duty of the police is and always has been to enforce the law, not to question or apologise for it’.
Police enforce laws agreed by politicians after rigorous debate and scrutiny (well, that’s the theory), and sometimes they’re landed with basket-case legislation such as the SNP’s Hate Crime Act, which has brought a deluge of largely anonymous allegations – many vexatious.
It has become almost fashionable to say sorry for errors which had nothing to do with the person making the apology, ostensibly because they or their advisers assumed it would make them look good – a phenomenon we might label the cult of apology.
In April 2022, Nicola Sturgeon apologised to the thousands of women who were ‘vilified’ and executed after being accused of witchcraft.
She said they had suffered an ‘egregious historic injustice, driven at least in part by misogyny in its most literal sense: hatred of women’.
The ‘deep misogyny’ motivating the act had not been consigned to history, she asserted, adding that today it ‘expresses itself not in claims of witchcraft but in everyday harassment, online rape threats and sexual violence’.
Yet last year the SNP Government shelved plans to back a planned law that would absolve the women of the crimes committed between the mid-16th and mid-18th centuries.
It’s possible that – belatedly – ministers had realised there were more pressing present-day priorities to be getting on with, including fixing a broken NHS and failing schools, though they have failed to tackle those problems (or say sorry for making them worse).
When there are apologies for genuine scandals, they’re often hard to take seriously.
Ms Sturgeon apologised last week for the failure to dual the A9 on time – but naturally insisted her government hadn’t ‘messed up’.
You might wonder who else could have been responsible, given the SNP has been in power for nearly 20 years – but Ms Sturgeon’s explanation didn’t provide much of an answer to that question.
Earlier this year, she apologised to bereaved families for the deaths of thousands of Scots during her handling of the Covid pandemic, but not everyone was convinced by her tears – Scottish Secretary Alister Jack said she could ‘cry from one eye if she wanted to’.
Docked
Former health secretary Michael Matheson apologised last week for running up a near-£11,000 bill on a parliamentary iPad, but only after he was hit with a suspension and told his pay would be docked – and he’s still stubbornly clinging to his job as an MSP.
Sometimes apologies are clearly tactical but backfire badly. In 2012, a contrite Nick Clegg (now Sir Nick) apologised for promising to oppose any increase in tuition fees, which was then cast aside when the Lib Dems took office with the Tories.
He said: ‘We made a pledge, we did not stick to it, and for that I am sorry.’
That expression of remorse did the Lib Dems few favours, as voters later cast them into electoral oblivion.
Former Deputy Prime Minister Sir Nick had the last laugh and is now a high-flying executive at Meta, which owns Facebook, reportedly earning a salary of £2.7million – with a bonus worth almost £10million in 2022.
Apologies are relatively easy to make, as long as the lawyers have looked at them line by line before they’re stated in public of course, and can generate some favourable headlines – or at least headlines which distract from other failures (for which, in most cases, no apology is forthcoming).
Cancelled
As for Ms Farrell, her most significant act since starting her job last year was enlisting an on-duty traffic officer to chauffeur her 120 miles from Edinburgh to her home in Northumberland, when her train was cancelled.
Admittedly, she did issue a humiliating public apology – albeit only after she was found out.
But what about an apology from Ms Farrell for failing victims of ‘minor’ crimes? Investigating crime is the job of the police, after all.
The Chief Constable has declared that the cash-strapped force can no longer afford to fully investigate all offences.
If your lawnmower is stolen from the garden shed or your car is vandalised, you will probably get a reference number for the insurer after a cursory phone call – assuming you can get through on the 101 non-emergency number.
Police do have enough time, however, to record details of ‘non-crime hate incidents’, and as we reported on Saturday this could affect the job prospects of the alleged perpetrator – even though no offence has been committed.
As Tory MSP Murdo Fraser has found, it’s hard to extract an official apology in such circumstances – one of his tweets criticising the SNP Government was reported to police as a hate incident by a trans activist, leading him to threaten legal action.
Sorry to say it, but the burgeoning apology culture is a charade which tells you all you need to know about our shameless public figures and political masters.
