Meghan Markle appears to be on a mission to prove that cancel culture really does exist. It seems that no one is too big to be sacked for criticising her. She boasts a body count that could soon rival her husband’s 25 Talibs. Markle – or rather the hysteria surrounding her – has ripped through the British media, getting Piers Morgan booted from Good Morning Britain, claiming a scalp at the Society of Editors, and now, if reports are to be believed, Jeremy Clarkson is about to come unstuck for his infamous Sun on Sunday column about Meghan. If only the ‘uncancellable’ JK Rowling would have a pop at her; we’d have the ultimate culture-war showdown on our hands.

Of all the people to bear the brunt of Marklemania, Clarkson was perhaps the easiest target. He was almost asking for it. In his column just before Christmas he said he loathed Meghan more than Rose West and dreamed of the day she would be paraded through the streets naked, pelted with excrement as she goes. It was outrageous and close to the bone even by the former Top Gear star’s standards.

Cancel culture not only stifles free speech and creativity, it renders genuine apologies pointless

Now, 20,000 IPSO complaints and various apologies later, Variety reports that Amazon Prime Video is ‘likely to be parting ways’ with him, after the final, already commissioned episodes of his hit shows, Clarkson’s Farm and The Grand Tour, are aired. Clarkson published an extended apology on Instagram yesterday, noting that Amazon and ITV (where he presents Who Wants to Be a Millionaire) were both ‘incandescent’ over the now-deleted column.

But here’s the thing about that column: he was joking. It’s a simple point but one that has apparently gone unappreciated in this whole saga. Reading the Sussexes’ statement about the scandal yesterday (they accused Clarkson of a ‘pattern of writing articles that spread hate rhetoric, dangerous conspiracy theories and misogyny’), you’d have thought the column was deadly serious. His weird vision of Meghan receiving medieval punishment, referencing a famous scene from Game of Thrones, was clearly intended as a bit of comedic hyperbole, aimed at expressing just how irritating he finds her. Had Clarkson been inciting violence against Meghan or anyone else, a sacking would be the least he would deserve. But he wasn’t. Everyone knows that, and yet everyone pretends otherwise in the rush to burn the heretic.

Whether or not you found the joke funny is irrelevant. For what it’s worth, Clarkson’s public school pub-bore schtick has never been my cup of tea. But this is the price we pay for free speech: sometimes people say things you don’t like, or crack jokes you find a bit much. In the end, it’s not a very high price, is it?

Being a loudmouth is also Clarkson’s whole deal. This is the man who once said, of striking workers, that he ‘would take them outside and execute them in front of their families’. He wasn’t being serious then and he wasn’t being serious in that column before Christmas. But whereas before, in slightly saner times just a few years ago, Clarkson controversies would run for a while and then fizzle out, this one is close to making a serious dent in his career and output. You don’t need to be a fan of his to see the problem with this. Commentary and culture must now bow down before hurt feelings – and that’s a dreadful, joyless place to be in.

There are a couple of depressing things about Clarkson’s Insta apology. Firstly, he all but says that, in response to the Meghan scandal, he will sanitise his own output, in the hope of making sure he doesn’t misstep like this again. ‘It’s hard to be interesting and vigilant at the same time,’ he writes. ‘You never hear peals of laughter coming from a health-and-safety seminar. But I promise you this, I will try.’ This is one of the under-appreciated things about cancel culture: its broader chilling effect. The way it shaves the edges off public life, the way it stymies creativity, the way it incentivises everyone to carry on like a career politician, terrified of saying anything interesting.

The other depressing thing about Clarkson’s apology is that he really seems to mean it – and yet we all know it won’t make the blindest bit of difference. Perhaps I’m being naive, but that long, mournful statement reads as pretty genuine to me. He talks about how the accusation of ‘misogyny’ stings. That’s just not him, he says. Even on Top Gear they never did ‘women can’t park’ jokes, he adds. ‘I really am sorry.’

So, he has done everything that the cancellers have demanded of him. Retraction? Tick. Grovelling apology? Tick. Promise to ‘do better’? Tick. And yet of course it won’t be enough for them, ever – because, whatever the chattering classes say, cancel culture isn’t about accountability, it’s about vengeance.

I wish he hadn’t apologised. Apologies only gin up the cancellers and feed the whole infernal dynamic. Ultimately, I don’t think Jeremy Clarkson had much to apologise for, beyond being Jeremy Clarkson and making the sort of outrageous, not particularly funny joke Jeremy Clarkson tends to make. But at the same time, what a sad state of affairs it is that even genuinely contrite individuals might as well not bother now. Cancel culture not only stifles free speech and creativity, it renders genuine apologies pointless. It makes admitting fault a mug’s game. Our culture is so much worse for it.