As in earlier moments when he has run into trouble, Mr Hague adopted the tabloids' agenda and then sat back awaiting their adulation. He did not even have to wait for the Sun's. Leaks of the speech ensured that the Sun was salivating even before it was delivered. There was no excuse for branding every officer a racist. But as Mr Hague must know, institutional racism means no such thing.
Institutional racism is as much to do with the third as with the first two.
This was clearly explained by Macpherson. Only the mischievous would misinterpret it. Next came a dishonest link between the fall in stop and searches in London and the rise in street robberies in the country. Long before Macpherson, the Met was concerned by the disproportionate use of stops of black people - five times the rate for whites. Even before the report's publication, the Met had introduced more effective pilot schemes that reduced the number of black searches.