Iain Dale has broken his silence on that beach scuffle and has issued a full mea culpa:

“I want to apologise and say sorry to Stuart Holmes, who is a passionate campaigner and well known to everyone who attends party conferences and was perfectly entitled to do as he did on Tuesday in trying to get attention for his causes. It was totally out of character for me to react to him in the way I did. I also want to apologise for the blogpost I wrote after the incident. It was full of absurd bravado and in the heat of the moment I behaved in a frankly idiotic way. I have embarrassed not only myself but my family and my work colleagues and I apologise to them. I also want to apologise to Labour leader Ed Miliband and his conference attendees. Since the events of Tuesday I have gone through what happened over and over again in my mind. Whatever I felt at the time, nothing can justify what I did.”

Dale will buy the protester a new placard as reparation and has accepted a police caution from Sussex Police. Seems he’s fallen in to a bad crowd, hanging round with that Mr McBride too much…

UPDATE:

Iain Dale's to buy a new placard for the anti-nuke chap he had a tussle with. At least the apostrophe will be in the right place now.

— Chris Deerin (@chrisdeerin) September 26, 2013