For those hypocrites who criticise the captain, remember the captain can defy the management in the interest of safety but will be sacked for any other refusal of orders. I would ask you where the breach of safety was in returning to stand, versus the breach of taking a volatile situation by a powerful lunatic into the air.
The captain was indeed between a rock and a hard place, and given such a scenario could only play out one way in the media and with only one result at the end of that, I think he did the right thing, despite my instincts that he should have over-ruled the VP. He played the long game rather than doing the initially morally correct thing of getting stuck-in himself. Consequently, he keeps his job to fight another day, the purser gets reinstated and the VP is fired. That's a win.