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Andrew Mitchell and The Wrong Note ‘I’m now going to go in and get on with my work’. A week after the incident in Downing Street which prompted Plebgate, Government chief whip Andrew Mitchell MP sought to sign off on the whole sorry business. Approaching his office, he addressed the ensuing company of journalists and camera operators, repeating for their benefit his personal apology to the police officers concerned. As Mitchell finished making his statement and moved across the wide Whitehall pavement towards his office, he hoped he had done enough to remove himself from the news agenda. But the grain of his voice didn’t make for an easy escape. It was most noticeable in that last sentence, after he had completed the scripted apology: the how-now-brown-cow vowels; mouth shaped in a choirboy’s ‘o’; purity of tone. Having shown you people around, the Captain of School seemed to be saying, I must now go to the Pavilion and get on with the Game. Good of you to come and visit, his tousled hair appeared to add. It wasn’t yer actual Hooray stuff (in any case, BoJo shows this is passable as long as you make a point of hamming it up). Simply something extra in his voice: surplus and virtuous. Spoken in all sincerity, most likely; but hard to credit when so many are feeling pinched and grubby, or said to be. Schooled at Rugby, the Royal Tank Regiment and Jesus College, Cambridge, Andrew Mitchell gave voice to British authority, the way it used to sound. Sounding like that in 2012 he was always going to have to resign.