Say you’re sorry — but never apologise for anything you’ve actually done

Rod Liddle says that Gordon Brown’s contrition about the British children tragically deported to Australia is a very Noughties phenomenon — the perfectly pointless non-apology

I never knew it was Gordon Brown who sent all those kids off to Australia, packed them off and waved goodbye from the quayside, and now feels terribly bad about the whole thing. This deportation scheme, which ran from about 1920 to 1967, was designed to give British children from underprivileged backgrounds a new life in the former colony, which considered itself to be short of white folks, any white folks; too often, though, the children were torn from the comfort and familiarity of their neighbourhoods and, once abroad, exploited for their puny labour, and treated with what can only be described as the roughest of love. There were cases of abuse, although none of it, by the standards of the time, seemed like abuse then.

Gordon Brown was 15 years old when the programme ended, but he has nonetheless taken it upon himself to apologise for the behaviour of others. He is now, very officially, sorry that this stuff ever took place. That will come as a comfort to the expats — an apology from someone who had nothing to do with the scheme, who did not understand why it was undertaken, who bore no responsibility for it, who has never met anyone who was the victim of it. An apology of almost perfect pointlessness, then — rather as if I suddenly decided I ought to apologise for the Rape of Nanking. Almost, but not quite, perfectly pointless; the apology at least gives the Prime Minister the opportunity to show that he is human, that he can be contrite, that there are things which affect him on a personal level and which he can apologise for on behalf of all of us.