"I apologise for what others have done"

Gordon Brown will, apparently, this week apologise to the hundreds of thousands of children virtually deported from orphanages and care homes to Australia in the middle of the last century. Many of them are probably dead by now. The child Migration Programme was indeed a black period in our history.

The fact that he will apologise, something he struggles to do normally in a meaningful sense, is because his "apology" is coordinated with that by Prime Minister Rudd in Australia.

Those victims who are still alive in Australia deserve to have their plight acknowledged, and especially those who were abused and badly treated over there. (At least this is better than the ridiculous suggestion that we should apologise to all slaves before 1850, or to the Irish for a potato famine in 1848. There may be descendants who still feel aggrieved, and they may even be pleased to see the haughty English grovelling, but they are not the real victims, who have long since died.)

But can anyone really apologise for that for which he has no personal responsibility? G.Brown is presuming to speak for the nation in expressing contrition. But he is (we hope) merely a temporary office holder, not head of state, and he had absolutely no part in the forced migration. During much of it he was not even born.

It would surely be far better to apologise for those things for which he is responsible, - sale of our gold bullion at rock bottom prices, destruction of our pensions, bankrupting our economy with unaffordable spending, sending troops to Afghanistan under- equipped for a war, politicisng the civil service, reneging on a promise to hold a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty/Constitution, etc., etc.

If he could somehow bring himself to admit his own failures, his stature would be increased . That he can't suggests that his choice of things to apologise for is dictated by political considerations, and recognised as such.