Gavin Williamson can only apologise. He can only apologise for the week of A-Level results meltdown he was warned about months in advance but chose to ignore until it was far too late. He can only apologise for, or rather to, the thousands of BTec students who are yet to receive their qualifications.
For everything that is Williamson’s fault and for which other people have been sacked, all Williamson can do is come off the despatch box of the House of Commons and say “I can only apologise.”
Does it matter that it’s not true? When Williamson says “I can only apologise”, he is, of course, entirely wrong. An apology is far from the only course of action open to him. The traditional one is to resign. What he means when he says, “I can only apologise” is “I am only prepared to apologise.”
It was, in a way, the performance of his life. The occasion was entirely unremarkable but arguably nevertheless represented the high watermark of the new politics of which we are all the victim.
The despatch box of the House of Commons is, in theory, where ministers come to be held to account because their actions have been liberated from their consequences.
Donald Trump once boasted that he could shoot someone dead in Fifth Avenue and wouldn’t cost him any votes. Williamson could be filmed with his top off on the dancefloor at an illegal warehouse rave and then, when called to the House of Commons to explain himself, perform the introductory rap to ‘I’m The Scatman’ by Scatman John then walk off and go about his day.
He has already been sacked for endangering national security by leaking information from the National Security Council (at this point, we must point out for legal reasons that Williamson denies those allegations, but also that those denials were not believed by anybody. If they had been, he wouldn’t have been sacked.)
He has now overseen the single greatest fiasco of modern times, one so big it has created a new kind of political microclimate. The A Level results farce was so bad that both the head of the exam regulator, Ofqual, and the most senior civil servant in the Department for Education have lost their jobs over it, but Williamson hasn’t.
A-level results: Students protest outside Downing Street amid growing pressure for Gavin Williamson to resign
So the evidence that errors of unforgivable, jaw-dropping magnitude took place are not contested by anybody, not even by Williamson. But the person ultimately responsible for them, Williamson, bears no responsibility at all.
What was said or not said at the despatch box of the House of Commons no longer matters. We live not so much in an era of post-truth as of post-responsibility.
It is now so clearly established that as there is nothing that Williamson can do, no problem that is not too complex for him, no nanoscopically small part of governing that is not infinitely beyond him, that there is also nothing he can’t do.
To expect Williamson to take responsibility for his actions is no different from expecting a two-year-old to take responsibility for wetting their trousers.
Why should they? It’s not their fault. It’s yours for expecting any different.
Williamson can only apologise. You should take it as literally as it’s meant. Saying sorry is absolutely all that the man can do.
