Leader: A sorry state to be in over Sir Fred

WHAT explains our continuing fascination with the fall of Sir Fred Goodwin? Is it the enormity of the losses incurred by RBS under his leadership?

The scale and suddenness of his fall from grace? Or is it that three years on, the financial crisis is still being played out, austerity is hitting home, and RBS is still deep in the emergency ward?

Many factors give the BBC screening this evening of Sir Fred Goodwin’s 2009 apology to shareholders a haunting resonance. The documentary reveals little that we do not already know about Goodwin and his abrasive leadership style. Since then he has been humiliated in the media, renounced part of his pension and is ostracised in the business world.

Yet many feel he has not apologised enough. Contemporary culture now seems to demand, not just “sorry” but full-on tearful contrition, preferably accompanied by a pledge to devote the rest of a life to voluntary work.

Certainly the apology needed to be wider than the one he gave to shareholders. But there is now a danger of heaping all the errors and misjudgments of the banks over a bubble decade on the shoulders of one man. We forget that the same shareholders approved the take-over of ABN Amro and that most of the City and financial establishment gave full backing to Sir Fred, right till the end.

Now we have complex and wide-ranging bank reforms to work through, sovereign debt write-downs to be provided for and somehow, through all of this, for lending to the SME sector to be maintained and expanded. It is time to move on to avoid more tears tomorrow.