Why can't politicians just say sorry?
The News Agents
Global
4.1 • 5.4K Ratings
🗓️ 19 May 2023
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
When Matt Hancock visited News Agents HQ yesterday, he repeatedly refused to answer questions about decisions he made in government during the pandemic.
And it got us thinking about why so many politicians struggle to admit when they’ve got things wrong.
Today Lewis asks why is it - in politics - that sorry always seems to be the hardest word?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Newsagents podcast is brought to you by HSBC UK, opening up a world of opportunity. |
| 0:09.1 | This is a global player original podcast. |
| 0:12.5 | I just feel like I can speak more freely at a more human level than almost any other person in politics. |
| 0:20.8 | I'm not intending to get very far into this, |
| 0:23.7 | but I'm not going to say anything more, |
| 0:25.5 | because I don't, here I certainly don't want to give the oxygen of publicity. |
| 0:29.1 | I'm not going there. I'm just not going there. |
| 0:31.3 | Don't worry. Matt isn't back in the studio. |
| 0:33.7 | In case you missed it, |
| 0:34.7 | they were a few highlights of all the times. |
| 0:36.9 | We pushed Matt Hancock |
| 0:38.3 | yesterday to accept responsibility for some of his more choice decisions in government when he |
| 0:44.0 | joined us at Newsagents HQ. He said, as you heard, that he just didn't want to go there. At the time |
| 0:50.7 | when all of the controversy around Hancock broke, he did apologise for his actions. |
| 0:55.8 | He went into the jungle for redemption, but his not wanting to go back with us to still be held accountable, got us thinking that these days Matt Hancock really isn't alone. |
| 1:05.6 | Politicians, people in public life, are so reluctant to, as Hancock put it, go over old coals. Often they just don't |
| 1:13.0 | want to take responsibility. Often they will not apologise. If you look back at Matt Hancock's |
| 1:18.3 | leak WhatsApp when the news of his affair broke, he and his advisors spoke so much about whether |
| 1:24.1 | he should even accept he broke the rules, should apologise for it, |
| 1:28.1 | strategically, whether it was worth doing politically, if not morally, that doing so would be a big |
| 1:34.5 | thing. So today on the newsagents, something a bit different. We take a look, the long view, |
| 1:40.4 | on why it is that in politics, sorry seems to be the hardest word. |
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