If the government were a company, the shareholders would have thrown out the chairman and board of directors by now. If it were a school, Ofsted inspectors would have judged it inadequate and put it into special measures. If there had potentially been lawbreaking, the police would have been involved a lot sooner. But the government knows it is bigger than any such institution, and consequently thinks it can’t be moved.
Its behaviour over the past few weeks has chillingly echoed the pattern adopted by many organisations accused of something horrendous, which is to double down, evade, attack accusers, hide behind investigations, and ultimately use the shield of an apology to say – as Mark Zuckerberg has been saying for half his life – that clearly we didn’t get everything right, and we must now look to a future where such things never happen again.
