Last week two Englishmen said that they were deeply sorry, but David Cameron had an easier time of it than Tony Hayward. The prime minister’s unequivocal apology in Parliament for what he called the indefensible shootings in Londonderry in 1972 was universally praised for its candour and courage.
Two days later the hapless chief executive of BP appeared before a Congressional committee and managed to dig himself into a deeper hole than ever, quite failing to propitiate the wrath of his interrogators, not that there was anything he could have done to satisfy them short of kneeling and disembowelling himself according to the formal rituals of seppuku. Hayward is a perfectly competent geologist who has been hopelessly out of his depth from the beginning of this disaster and whose excruciating gaffes (“I want my life back”) -- have won no friends.
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