So sorry but ‘sorry’ might be a bit harder to say than you think

“Sorry, not sorry ’bout what I said, I’m just tryna have some fun

Don’t worry, don’t worry, don’t lose your head, I didn’t mean to hurt anyone”

Anne Boleyn’s song from the musical ‘Six’

It’s been said so many times before it’s become a cliché, that ‘sorry’ is the hardest word to say.

It’s now apparently not a word we can expect from The Conservative party.

According to a report in the Daily Telegraph, Baroness Maclean, one of Kemi Badenoch’s more scrutinised appointments, as head of strategy told a meeting of the Conservative Women’s Organisation that the previous government had a “tendency to make announcements without thinking through how they would be delivered”.

I’ll second that, I was there. They did and it was very annoying if you were the person left to try and deliver it, knowing that the thought that had gone into the “how” was minimal. It’s what Rachel Maclean went on to say that’s attracted attention.

“We’ve done the mea culpas, we’ve done the apologies, we’ve done all that. Now we want to look to the future and have something to give people hope, because we do strongly believe that we are the only party with a coherent set of plans, and we want to rebuild our reputation for competence and trust, and we think that comes from doing this very difficult work now.”

Now there’s a lot of questions here. So let’s break them down.

First, have the Conservatives actually ‘done the apologies’? There has been noticeable reference to ‘mistakes made’ in many of Kemi Badenoch’s speeches this year, and there have been similar references in articles from her Shadow Cabinet on this site, but one big “Sorry”?  I’m not sure we have had, and would seem we won’t get.

Second, maybe she’s right? Over the past year I have heard many voices, mostly not Conservative, demanding an apology “for the past 14 years” on the premise, that without one, the Conservative party had no right to continue existing. Labelling Kemi Badenoch’s version of the party as the same as Rishi Sunak’s or Liz Truss’ or Boris Johnson’s is quite transparently a gambit of Labour, the Lib Dems  and Reform.

Also, a number of people, not least Michael Gove writing on ConservativeHome, have pointed out those 14 years were not the abject failure our opponents like to make out.  Yes, certain promises were not delivered, and that was a big problem the party should acknowledge but there is a record to defend that needs no apology.

Third, what would the apology look like? Judging by the many people I’ve spoken to who say “until they apologise for….” there is a very wide range of demands. Some want an apology for Brexit, which, to be honest is not going to happen, as the referendum result dictated that, not any one political party, and quibbling the result will for some be an endless reverb. Some want apologies for Boris, or Liz, or Rishi. Others want apologies for allowing Conservatives they’d brand as ‘Lib Dems’ to remain in the party. Still more would like the mea culpa to be about in fighting and the increased tendency for blue on blue attacks, particularly from the right of the party.

It was a Tory MP who suggested to me the party won’t escape the toxicity of the recent past until everyone involved has quit the field. Well Ok , but that would remove a sizeable chunk of an already hollowed out parliamentary party.

On top of who and what the apology should be, I’d make two observations. I’d bet the people clamouring loudest for an apology are not going to vote Conservative again anyway. And it may well be that it’s too late. If you were going to do a big Mea Culpa moment, to mangle Shakespeare, if it were done t’were better it had been done quickly.

Opinion in the most senior ranks of the party differ. One tells me that whatever apology we think we have offered it’s clearly not enough, and we need to demonstrate that we have changed, not just say so. Another largely agrees with Maclean, in a version of ‘you do it, you do it once, you mean it, and move on.’

What many agree with is you don’t say ‘we’re done with apologies’ out loud. It would be, indeed it was, a free gift to opponents who repeated what Lord Ashcroft’s latest polling suggested that the public still think the Conservatives have learned nothing since the election.

I really don’t think that’s true but that really doesn’t matter. Clearly, the party hasn’t nailed the convincing contrition with what it’s done so fair, and I’m not sure how you’d construct one that would assuage all the apology demanders.

There is plenty of support for looking to the future not the past but it throws an unflattering light on another issue. Whilst policy is worked on, and vision is hinted at rather than explicitly explained, the wide support for “show not tell” is weakened by not having things yet to show.

Maclean might be right, perhaps the time for sorry has passed but “Sorry” really is the hardest thing to say, if you are not sure what it is you are sorry for, and not ready yet to explain what you will do so differently

The post So sorry but ‘sorry’ might be a bit harder to say than you think appeared first on Conservative Home.