If they are really sorry, why don’t today’s politicians apologise for their OWN mistakes?

By Graham Grant

TONY Blair once made a poignant public apology for a tragic event that he said had ‘left deep scars’.

But he wasn’t talking about the Iraq war – instead he was making a statement on the 150th anniversary of the Irish potato famine.

In 1997, he described it as a ‘defining event in the history of Ireland and of Britain’, and a ‘massive human tragedy’.

With typical forthrightness, Jeremy Paxman later accused Mr Blair of an ‘exercise in moral vacuousness’.

Quite rightly, he pointed out that ‘you should apologise for things that you have done, that you recognise that perhaps you shouldn’t have done’ – rather than for the errors of predecessors.

In 2006, Mr Blair voiced ‘deep sorrow’ over Britain’s participation in the slave trade, despite our important role in abolishing it.

He didn’t display quite as much contrition over Iraq, though he did offer a legalistic non-apology: ‘I regret deeply and profoundly the loss of life.’

Today Nicola Sturgeon is expected to apologise on behalf of the Scottish Government to gay men convicted of now-abolished sexual offences.

She will make the apology at Holyrood to coincide with the publication of new legislation to provide an automatic pardon to all those affected.

It will enable people who were ‘unjustly criminalised simply because of who they loved’ to apply to have convictions removed from central criminal records.

The apology itself will be made on ‘behalf of the Scottish Government for the treatment of homosexual men under previous governments’.

In other words, it’s an apology for something Miss Sturgeon and her colleagues did not do, and could not possibly have done.

No doubt for many that apology, and the pardons, will be meaningful, though some gay men say they dislike the notion of a ‘pardon’ because it presupposes they did something wrong in the first place.

Others wear their convictions as a badge of honour, knowing that their ordeal ultimately led to a more enlightened approach by society and the criminal justice system.

But just how far back in history are we prepared to go with apologies for the actions of previous governments?

Perhaps there should be a formal apology to descendants of those were tried for witchcraft, or to the families of criminals who were put in the stocks and subjected to public humiliation centuries ago.

The moral relativism of the growing trend for political apologies is also troubling.

Previous generations are increasingly blamed for what many now regard as unforgivable crimes that run entirely contrary to the values of today.

But this approach can oversimplify complex issues, as to some extent the law in past decades merely reflected the public morality of the time, often influenced by religious belief – now in steep decline.

It’s also striking that politicians seem to make the most sincere and high-profile apologies for what they didn’t do, rather than apologising for what they have done.

Perhaps future SNP administrations at Holyrood will apologise for the deceit and distortion that underpinned the remarkable work of fiction that was the SNP’s White Paper on independence.

Might there also be an apology amid energy crises in years to come over the shameful decision to ban fracking, merely to placate the SNP’s powerbase and its unseemly pact with the Greens?

There is no sign of an apology for the appalling failures in turning around our schools and hospitals after a decade of mismanagement and wilful neglect.

John Swinney has yet to say sorry for denouncing critics of the Named Person scheme for linking the murder of toddler Liam Fee to the failures of an embryonic version of the scheme.

His vociferous denials fell apart earlier this year when a damning official report revealed that Liam was indeed subject to an early pilot in Fife, and that it may have fuelled ‘confusion’ over his care.

Likewise we shouldn’t hold our breath for an apology to relatives of victims of the Lockerbie bomber who was released on ‘compassionate’ grounds with months to live in 2009, but survived for another three years.

It was a shabby decision that turned Scotland into a diplomatic laughing-stock and allowed the man convicted of Britain’s worst mass murder to fly back to a hero’s welcome in his homeland.

Nor has there been an apology from the Scottish Government or prison chiefs for letting out convicted killer Robbie McIntosh on home leave, allowing him to launch a near-fatal attack on a grandmother walking her dog.

Justice Secretary Michael Matheson last week insisted that he could not comment for legal reasons prior to McIntosh’s sentencing next month (NOV) – despite the thug having admitted a charge of attempted murder.

The apology Miss Sturgeon will make today (TUES) is really gesture politics, which will cost her nothing and for which she will not be widely criticised.

True, there are times when apologies from public or private bodies for their past misconduct are meaningful, as the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry (SCAI) has shown.

In 2004, Jack McConnell made a ‘sincere and full’ apology to victims of historical abuse in children’s homes, on behalf of the ‘people of Scotland’ – not on behalf of the then Labour-led Scottish Executive.

This was seen an attempt to protect ministers from legal action, and of course ‘the people of Scotland’ were not culpable – it was the state which sent children into the care of abusers.

Mr McConnell, then First Minister, told Holyrood the abuse was ‘deplorable, unacceptable and inexcusable’ – but stopped short of agreeing to a full public inquiry.

The SNP finally launched the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry (SCAI) two years ago.

The statutory probe, which resumes its public hearings in Edinburgh today, has elicited apologies from a succession of bodies, including religious orders, over serious failures that allowed children to be abused.

Those apologies have been of great value to some survivors of abuse, and to me it’s clear that the inquiry – the cost of which has soared to almost £10million – is performing vital work.

A greater measure of its worth will be whether it leads to redress for victims, from the Scottish Government and from the institutions involved.

This matter isn’t in the remit of the inquiry, but it may well be influenced by its findings.

The institutional apologies were hard-won at hearings before a High Court judge – Lady Smith, who chairs the SCAI.

Political apologies are rather easier, allowing those who make them a temporary break from the rigours of governing – not that those have unduly troubled the SNP In recent years.

Even the personal apologies – such as the one from Jared O’Mara, the Labour MP suspended after commenting online that he wanted to have an orgy with members of Girls Aloud, and allegedly calling a constituent an ‘ugly b****’ – often sound rather hollow.

That is because they are designed for no other purpose than to ensure political survival, and are offered only when the culprit has been found out.

Sorry to be a bore, but there is an alternative to the burgeoning apology culture – and that is for politicians not to make such horrendous mistakes in the first place.