TOM UTLEY: Why is it so easy to say sorry – except on the occasions when we’re really at fault?

As I walked through the rain to the station yesterday morning, a young woman approached me on the sidewalk, holding an umbrella in one hand and looking at the smartphone in the other.

Not looking where she was going, she knocked her umbrella against mine, nearly knocking it out of my hand. I blurted out the one word that comes most naturally to the lips of many of us in such circumstances.

“Sorry!” I said.

After apologizing for her carelessness, she glared at me and walked on.

Oh, a guy gets used to this kind of treatment after a lifetime of apologizing for sins he didn’t commit. Stepping on my foot on the subway? “Sorry,” I say, wincing in pain. Pushing me aside in line for the bus? “Sorry,” again.

“I’m sorry, but we ordered our food 50 minutes ago and there’s still no sign of us”; “I’m sorry, but you said you would come by yesterday to fix our leaking pipe.”

I apologize to the dog when I trip over her, and I’ve even apologized to inanimate objects when I bump into them on the street.

This week, a survey of 1,000 adults confirms that many others simply don’t think it’s true that sorry is the hardest word. Commissioned by Honor to launch its new mobile phone, researchers found that the average Brit apologizes around three times a week – or around 150 times a year – with 38 percent of us admitting to saying sorry when we don’t really mean it.

Of course, some people apologize for the shortcomings of others as a sarcastic expression of passive aggression. In my experience, this is especially true during marital disputes.

“Oh, I’m so sorry, honey. I should have reminded you that I wouldn’t be here for dinner tonight. I only warned you three times yesterday.”

No wonder nearly half of respondents said their biggest pet peeve was someone who said sorry without meaning it.

But I think we say sorry more often to show our good will and to avoid confrontation.

For example, when that young woman accidentally hit me with her umbrella while glued to her cell phone, I might have expressed my feelings more honestly by saying, “Watch where you’re going, you idiot!”

But this could have provoked a flood of insults – or perhaps worse in these violent times.

Instead, mumbling “sorry,” I said, “Okay, we both know you’re the one at fault. But I’m a reasonable guy, I realize it wasn’t intentional, and I’m not going to make a big deal out of it.”

Call it shyness if you like. I prefer to think of it as politeness. But I have to admit that it is a lot easier to say sorry when we are clearly innocent than when we are actually blamed.

Nowhere is this more true than in the Westminster bubble. There, politicians have no hesitation in offering cringe-worthy apologies for the mistakes and failings of others, while showing the deepest reluctance to say sorry for those for whom they themselves are responsible.

Look at Tony Blair, who happily apologised for Britain’s failure to alleviate the Irish famine, 150 years after the fact.

He also apologized for Britain’s involvement in the shameful slave trade, some two centuries after it led the way in its abolition.

But while he showed genuine remorse for the sins of the Stuarts, the Hanoverians and the Victorians, he showed no willingness to apologise for his own catastrophic mistakes.

Take the Iraq war. It is true that he eventually offered something of an apology, after the Chilcot inquiry found him guilty of a wide range of failings, from deliberately exaggerating the threat posed by the Iraqi regime to ignoring warnings about the potential consequences of military action.

But no sooner had he said that he accepted ‘entire responsibility without exception or excuse’ for the consequences of that war (which continue to this day), than he came up with numerous excuses. He rejected most of Chilcot’s criticisms and insisted that almost all his own decisions were for the best.

He is indeed sorry, but that was only because he had been criticized.

This week he was at it again, flatly refusing to apologise for opening our borders to mass immigration. When asked by the BBC’s Amol Rajan whether his policy was a mistake, he replied with a resounding ‘no’.

He should convince the millions of people waiting for hospital appointments or in their own homes that he is not responsible for the way public services are collapsing under the sheer numbers of people.

Keir Starmer is no better at admitting his own mistakes. This week he was quick enough to offer a heartfelt apology to all those who suffered in and after the catastrophic Grenfell Tower fire – which of course was not his own fault.

But try getting him to say sorry for taking away winter fuel allowance from struggling pensioners – while giving £10,000 pay rises to train drivers already earning £65,000 a year. Oh no, he’ll tell you. Those decisions may have been mine, but they were all the Tories’ fault!

But it’s not just Labour politicians who have trouble demonstrating convincing remorse. How about a non-apology from Tory leader Liz Truss, after her reckless mini-Budget sent mortgage rates soaring: ‘I’m not saying I did everything absolutely perfectly in the way the policy was communicated. But what I am saying is that I faced real resistance and actions from the Bank of England which undermined my policy and created the problems in the markets.’

As for my fellow Mail columnist and former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, there can be no politician who has had to apologise more – whether for breaking his own lockdown rules, misleading the Queen about the legality of dissolving parliament, insulting the people of Liverpool or, on one famous occasion, angering the entire population of Papua New Guinea with his love of a flashy phrase.

In another article from 2006, when he was opposition spokesman on higher education, he wrote: ‘We in the Conservative Party have been used to orgies of cannibalism and Papua New Guinea-style killing of chiefs for a decade. That is why we watch with gleeful amazement as madness engulfs the Labour Party.’

Papua New Guinea’s High Commissioner in London was furious, telling BBC Radio 4 his comments were deeply damaging to her country and “an insult to the integrity and intelligence of all the people of Papua New Guinea”.

She had barely spoken when Boris offered his immortal ‘apology’: ‘I did not mean to offend the people of Papua New Guinea. I am sure that, like us, they lead an impeccable life of bourgeois domesticity.’

He added: ‘I would like to add Papua New Guinea to my global apology trail.’

A sincere expression of genuine remorse? Or an ironic attempt at another laugh?

If I have wronged you, dear Boris, what can I say – except sorry.