Sorry Performance

The commissioner of the Metropolitan Firearms and Headbangers' Club, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, has issued what is evidently meant to pass for an apology over the identity theft perpetrated by police spies on dead children. He began like any celebrity who has just made a bigot of himself in public, and said he was sorry about the shock and offence which certain intolerant persons have decided to take. He went on to emulate the Archbishop of Canterbury, who in the recent debate over equal marriage apologised for centuries of Christian ill-treatment of homosexuals before arguing that they should continue to be treated as second-order human beings. Hogan-Howe pronounced the identity theft "morally repugnant", and then refused to expose the perpetrators of the moral repugnance on the grounds that they might get caught. Hogan-Howe finished up by saying that if only the police had been allowed to go on sneaking around in peace, nobody would have been hurt; which for sheer ethical fortitude rivals Nick Clegg apologising for having made a pledge. The lawyer for one family called the statement a PR exercise, which seems unduly flattering.