By the time you read this blog the press will probably have found some meatier story to gnaw away at but while Andrew Mitchell is still in the public eye his case deserves a hearing. He had had a frustrating day and things hadn’t gone well. In fact things had gone so badly that, as he cycled out of Downing Street and encountered a policeman blocking his way, he could take no more. His fuse spectacularly blew and he filled the air with the kind of expletives you don’t even hear after the watershed.
Come the next morning a repentant Mitchell is being called to account for his eruption by all and sundry; and rightly so in my view. It’s not the behaviour we expect of senior government ministers and especially if they happen to be the chief whip. Maybe he needed a whip of his own (I mean the political sort, silly).
I was initially encouraged to hear that not only had he apologised to the Prime Minister, the press, the party and the police in general but he had also met with the police offer concerned in person to make amends. That sounds suspiciously like repentance to me and I applaud him for it. As a Christian I would hope that a corner was being turned by this act of humility. Barring the existence of other factors I know nothing about, I would hope a line could be drawn and recovery could start, even if the memory of the event causes the protagonists to be a little wary of each other in future. That’s real life.
But this is not real life, it’s politics and the same rules just don’t apply. I have the unnerving feeling that in politics, and in many other areas of life, the only standard of acceptable conduct is perfection. And if that is the case I, for one, can never live up. But it need not be this way. I have seen grieving parents forgive the doctor whose blunder caused the death of their child. I’ve seen the father of a bomb victim forgive the terrorist who primed the fuse. And most stunningly of all, Jesus Christ forgave the people who were brutally murdering him.
Have no doubt, Mitchell was in the wrong. He should not have filled the air with blue. But I am perturbed that the punishment in the press, probably in the courts and almost certainly in the cabinet room may vastly exceed the crime. And about that we should be concerned.
Let him who has never lost his cool tell me to get on my bike.
[1]