All right, he’s eaten dirt. Andrew Mitchell, Chief Whip, has now apologised to the Prime Minister and apologised profusely to the policeman he may or may not have called a pleb. In a statement today – prudently, he declined offers of radio interviews – Mitchell admitted that he ‘did not treat the police with the respect they deserve’ when on Wednesday evening one of them refused to allow him to ride his bicycle out of the Downing Street gate and directed him instead to the pedestrian one. In the outburst that followed, he is said to have told the man that he didn’t run the government. Well, that makes two of them; neither does the Chief Whip.
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Anyway, Mitchell’s grovel hasn’t cut much ice with the Police Federation which says he should resign and for good measure says his behaviour was ‘particularly disappointing’ in the week when two policewomen were murdered in Manchester.
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