"Ill conceived maybe - Moral yes!"

"It's worse than a crime - it's a mistake..." Nobody seem quite sure who first said that - either Fouché or Talleyrand - some cynical Frenchman anyway.

Either way, it's very apposite in this context. The key criticism of this all along, for me anyway, has been that it was likely to end up making things even worse, whereas going at it another way offered a real hope of making things better.