RADIO often goes in one ear and out the other, but an exchange on BBC Scotland a few years ago has stayed with me.

A Scottish cultural figure – who will remain nameless to protect the guilty – was giving a confessional interview to a sympathetic reporter. In the language of daytime TV, they were “opening up” about their past.

This, they explained, had been characterised by periods of considerable difficulty, not all of their own making. The conversation turned to the unkind and self-involved ways they’d let down and used and abused people in their life. This is standard fare – a routine staple in our voyeuristic and confessional culture – but what struck me most was the interviewer’s reaction.

She immediately congratulated her guest on how brave they were for being so open about their failures. Their wrongdoing – and its impact on those they’d wronged – dissipated into a round of applause, without any real attempt to find out whether our confessor had a lick of regret, real insight into their behaviour or any true purpose of redemption at all. We were taken straight to mercy, missing out justice entirely.

Perverse observation

It struck me right then – confession can be an excellent way of avoiding responsibility. This might seem like a perverse observation – but think about it a little, and I guarantee you’ll have met someone in your life, your work or your family who understands the manipulative power of the superficial apology, getting their retaliation in first by fessing up first. Sorry might seem to be the hardest word to say – but too often it isn’t. Saying sorry is far too easy.

I was reminded of the broadcast last week, as I fired up the livestream from the Post Office Inquiry. Paula Vennells stepped out of a taxi into a media scrum on Tuesday morning, looking harried, flanked by police officers, anticipating three days under the grill.

But for the General Election announcement, she’d have been front-page news all week. Even with Rishi Sunak’s drookit call to the ballot box, her weepy performance featured prominently across the media. And damn right too.

Having served as the Post Office director between 2012 and 2019, Vennells has an unenviable legacy of corporate leadership to defend. A national brand, reduced to a national scandal.........

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