Department for Tax and Spend
Jack Straw officially 'sorry'
Sometimes apologising can be the hardest thing to do. Especially if you're a politician - it's traditionally seen as a sign of weakness akin to painting a target on your forehead, handing a crossbow to your opponents and giving them a cheeky wink and a thumbs-up.
Yet there are instances in which you just have to say the hardest word of all (we mean 'sorry', by the way, and not the name of that stupid village in Wales that sounds like someone clearing their throat). Jack Straw found himself in that position yesterday. With the utterance of those two magic syllables, he became the first government minister to officially express regret over the 10p tax fiasco.
Appearing on Radio Five Live - and confronted with an angry caller who had lost money due to the recent shenanigans - Straw said:
"I am sorry that you have been placed in this position and it shouldn't have happened. "Sometimes even with the best brains available to government there are inadvertent consequences of changes. We put our hands up to that, we should have known more about the impact of the abolition of the 10p rate."
A quite startling admission, to be fair. It's not often a senior Cabinet minister sits down, shrugs and says 'yep, we should really have thought that one through.' Although that's a sentence that Gordon Brown might want to keep rehearsing over the next few months. Who knows? It might even gather him some sympathy and respect. Provided he doesn't flash his creepy American Idol smile at us again.
Shudder.
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