Shared Opinion | 24 January 2009

If the bankers start saying sorry, then we’ll have to forgive them. It’s much too soon

I’m not sure I can deal with contrition from bankers. I thought it was what I wanted, but I now think I was wrong. ‘The first stage is to fess up,’ said Stephen Hester, the new RBS chief executive, around about the time everything was going properly tits-up on Monday. And it felt, strangely, like we were about to be robbed. Again.

At first, I just thought I was angry about the ‘fess’. There are some men who can say ‘fess up’ instead of ‘own up’ or ‘confess’ and not look like berks. Not him. Many black Americans could probably manage it. Barack Obama could carry off a ‘fess’ should he ever feel inclined, although I’ve a hunch that he never will feel inclined, not even if, by the time you read this, he has already burned the White House to the ground with a faulty Illinois waffle iron.