Today, I recall with deep gratitude the Servant of God so greatly loved by us all, Pope John Paul II He loved you - and you returned his love Now we have to put his teaching into practice. This commitment has brought us here, as pilgrims in the footsteps of the Magi. With great joy I welcome you, dear young people. My particular greeting goes to those who, like the Magi, have come from the East. You are the representatives of so many of our brothers and sisters who are waiting, without realising it, to be led to Christ. If Sir Ian Blair wants to postpone the day when he is reduced to making TV commercials for tyres and electric awnings, he should waste no time before throwing himself on the mercy of an oddly forgiving British public.. The fact that a mother mourns in Sao Paolo evidently weighs on Sir Ian's conscience no more heavily than the despicable attempts to disguise the incompetence that led to the death of her son.
But surely you cannot rise to the post of Metropolitan Police Commissioner without a heightened sense of self-interest. As it is, his refusal to admit the blindingly obvious will further antagonise his former fan club in the right-wing press to the point at which Charles Clarke has no choice but to give him the boot.It would be naive to the point of childishness to expect important public servants to yield themselves to the demands of common decency. If Mr Blair had confessed before the general election that, although he meant well and believed the false intelligence, in retrospect he had to accept that Iraq was the worst foreign policy debacle since the appeasement of Hitler, he might well have won a majority well into three figures. We love nothing more than someone big enough to admit their own inadequacies. Estelle Morris is one of New Labour's very few admired figures because she admitted she wasn't up to the job of education secretary (although she seemed far more so than the incumbent, Ruth Kelly).
Kevin Keegan became almost a hero when he quit as England coach, saying he simply couldn't cope with the tactical demands of international football.Both of them benefited from their honesty, Morris quickly returning to government and Keegan landing a plum job (alright, a job; let's not go overboard) at Manchester City. It would come as small surprise if Ian Blair issued a heartfelt and tearful apology next week for the failure to catch Jack the Ripper.What could be nicer, after all, than to look magnanimous by showing contrition for the failures of others? If it's your own howler, on the other hand, then you revert to the Disraeli default position of "never apologise, never explain". On this 60th anniversary of the Japanese surrender, Sir Ian cannot bring himself even to go as far as Hirohito, and admit that the attempt to apprehend Mr de Menezes developed not necessarily to the Met's advantage.The crazy thing about this plague of sullen denial is that it's so utterly self-defeating. unless it's for something for which you cannot possibly be held to account. It was fine for Mr Blair to apologise for the Guildford Four and Birmingham Six, because he was fronting that hideous college rock band or working as Derry Irvine's pupil when those miscarriages of justices were committed. And when that version of events turns to dust, we are asked to wait six months for the official report.No one can be astonished by these double standards, which are shared between police, politicians and all those well practiced in the ancient art of buck-passing.