Jonathan Todd

James Crabtree has written a fascinating and much commented upon Prospect piece on the role that an apology might play in a quick return to Labour government should the Conservatives win the General Election later this year. This has set me thinking about the role of contrition in politics in general and two sorry Tory stories in particular. These sorry stories are: First, seeing (tacit and non-formal) apologies for being slow to make peace with the 1960s and for the excesses of the 1980s as being integral to the rebranding of the Conservatives sought by David Cameron (a project that is now threatened by a sense that the credit crunch and the scale of public debt have caused the Conservatives to renew their marriage vows to Margaret Thatcher and the 1980s); and, second, conceptualising the Republicans as being split between those who see a need for some kind of apology for the years of George W Bush as necessary to their political renewal and those who do not.

Some recent events – the reaction to the attempted Christmas day terrorist bombing in the US; the election to fill Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat in Massachusetts; the tea party protests; the spike in retirements from Democratic Congressmen; and President Obama’s approval rating - would seem to strengthen the position of those who are unapologetic for the Dubya years. But my default sense – which I am increasingly having cause to question - is that in the long-term more contrition than that which the likes of Karl Rove are presently prepared to offer will be required for the Republicans to fully recover. That said; there are signs, which are worrying to a European and (in the American sense of the word) liberal, that an unreconstructed Republican party might return to the White House in 2012. An example of such a sign is that when I departed Dulles airport, just outside DC, 48 hours ago I noted lots of t-shirts on sale like the one below.

Dulles may be in Virginia, but it is hardly in the heart of red state territory; Massachusetts is even less so. I can only fear what they are now thinking in such territory. But let’s return to American politics via a review of the role of an apology (of sorts) in the fortunes of the Conservative Party in recent years.

“There is no such thing as society.” This was one of the most outrageous and defining claims of the Thatcher years. So, for Cameron to repudiate this by saying that ”there is such a thing as society” was for him to grasp towards an apology for the excesses of Thatcherism in the form of a Clause 4-esque moment. In actuality, he failed to fully seize this moment by following this line up with words (“it’s just not the same thing as the state”) that amounted to a Burkian little platoons view of society that is little removed from Thatcher’s notion that “there are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first.”

Notwithstanding this I am with James Crabtree – pace Luke Akehurst – in conceding that lines such as these from Cameron, as well as a focus upon such non-traditional Tory themes as poverty and the environment, amount in tone, at least, to a sustained Tory apology and repositioning.

But that is soo 2005/7. You know, PCC (pre-credit crunch). We are now in a very different era. Philip Stephens has captured well what this meant for the Cameron project:

“The cuddly, environmentally friendly prospectus he offered during his early years as leader has collided with grim economic reality. The Tory leader used to promise to share the proceeds of economic growth between public services and lower taxes. There is nothing left to share. The choice is between what services to cut and what taxes to raise.”

David Goodhart touches upon another aspect of the Cameron project, “after Labour embraced the 1980s (the turn to the free market) the Tories have recently made their peace with the 1960s (race and gender equality, environmentalism and so on).” Part of the ”friendly prospectus” involves an apology for not previously being at ease with the 1960s. While Labour had to adapt to the 1980s to reinvent itself under Tony Blair, the 1997 election constituted, in part, a rejection of the dogmatic firmness of the Tory faith in the free market. Consequently, as well as finally reconciling themselves to the 1960s, Cameron has sought to apologise for the 1980s Thatcherite dogma that lead to 1997. He’s the “heir to Blair”, remember.

This strand of Cameron’s apology – the 1980s strand, if you will – has gone flaky since the need to control public debt (and the implied requirement for restraint in public spending) has become more apparent. This is because the Conservatives have seemed more keen than Labour to address this need. Peter Mandelson tried to increase this flakiness by speaking of the “barely disguised glee” of the Tories at the prospect of spending cuts.

The 1960s strand is also undermined by a Conservative Home survey that reports that reducing Britain’s carbon footprint is the lowest priority of Tory PPCs. Their second highest priority is “cutting red tape”. How 1980s and John Redwood-like is that?!? It’s like the regulatory failures of the credit crunch never happened. Perhaps, only Boy George and “reducing the public deficit” (aka cutting public spending), which was their top priority, could be more 1980s.

All of which supports Mandelson’s argument and gives the suggestion that Cameron may be a somewhat reformed character who wants to rebrand the Conservatives, but the Conservatives themselves do not wish to be so changed and the public are unconvinced that such a change has been completed. Jack Scott, a Labour PPC, has picked up strong evidence on the doorstep for this view being held amongst the public.

Cameron’s attempt to change the Conservatives has certainly been buffeted, most spectacularly by the credit crunch. However, he remains keen that the perception of change, at least, holds; whether he can make this perception stick in the hearts of his party and the minds of voters are different questions, however.

Returning to America, we note one of the most basic and fundamental distinctions between British and American politics. The Republicans have no politician in an office akin to Cameron’s. Whether the Republican leadership wants to apologise for George W Bush, as Cameron has sought to apologise for Thatcher et al, is immaterial, because no office exists from which a leader might thrust such an action upon their (welcoming or otherwise) party. Cameron may have fluffed his Clause 4 moment but this structural distinction between the US and the UK means that there is much less chance of a Republican Clause 4.

The nearest the Republicans have got to such a moment came in the form of a recently published book by Michael Steele, Republican Party Chairman, in which he discusses why the GOP has often lost touch with typical Americans since the Ronald Reagan era and concedes: “We screwed up.” (Notice another difference between the UK and the US: The 1980s are something for which the party of the right is to apologise in the UK and are something for the party of the right to seek to recover in the US).

However, as E. J. Dionne Jr notes, some Republicans remain on the offensive about the period for which Steele is apologetic. These are the kind of Republicans who are doubtful about Michael Steele.

“Much of the contention surrounding Barack Obama’s presidency is simply a continuation of our argument over the effects of George W. Bush’s time in office. That is why Obama, despite his fervent wishes, has been unable to usher in a new period of consensus. Bush’s defenders know that Obama’s election represented a popular reaction against the consequences of the Bush presidency. Because Obama is both the anti-Bush and the leader of the post-Bush cleanup squad, his success would complete the rebuke. So the Bush camp — Karl Rove’s regular contributions to the Wall Street Journal’s opinion pages are emblematic — must stay on the attack.”

The strand of the Cameronista project that is so determined to underline a sense of change within their party, it seems to me, is motivated by a desire to act upon an insight provided by Danny Finkelstein, one of their most sympathetic commentators: the British electorate is never wrong. Change is required, it is thought, to show that the party has moved on from the past mistakes that kept it out of office. However, the Rove strategy seems based on precisely the opposite view: the Dubya years weren’t missteps at all, but coloured by the right actions, and, in time, the American public will come to realise that they made a mistake in evicting the Republicans from the White House. It’s not so much “don’t blame me, I voted McCain” as “sorry, I’ve seen the error of my ways and wish I’d voted McCain.”

As well as on terrorism and foreign policy, the Republicans are unrepentant on their role in the economic situation. This is also noted by E. J. Dionne Jr:

“It’s striking that most conservatives, through a method that might be called the audacity of audacity, have acted as if absolutely nothing went wrong with their economic theories. They speak and act as if they had nothing to do with the large deficits they now bemoan and say we will all be saved if only we return to the very policies that should already be discredited. The few exceptions to this rule — Bruce Bartlett and Richard Posner, the authors of two bravely dissident books, come to mind — find themselves excommunicated from the conservative movement.”

Until very recently – the Massachusetts vote, etc – I’d have dismissed this lack of contrition, this pig-headedness, this wilful “we were right and we’re not sorry”, as the surest way for the Republicans to keep themselves out of high office for a long time. As Finkelstein argues, all of this is about the Republicans choosing to listen to themselves, not the electorate, who they are convinced can be very wrong. But if the Democrats can lose in Massachusetts, may be, an unrepentant Republican Party can return to the White House.

As Mandelson and Cameron both understand, the perception that the Conservatives have not changed is a real threat to their return to government. The credit crunch has complicated this rebranding exercise, though this exercise is still of great political significance. I’ve always tended to assume that the same rules apply to the Republicans: They won’t win without independents and they won’t gain the support of such voters without demonstrating that they have listened to them by showing contrition for the things that are perceived to have gone wrong under Dubya.

Yet now I am starting to wonder and worry whether the same rules do actually apply to the Republicans. America is, famously, different. It is the right nation - there are deep reasons why, for example, as touched upon above, Reagan is revered in the US as Thatcher is reviled in the UK – and, perhaps, its slight turn to the left under Obama (always more a rejection of Dubya than a convinced liberalisation) may prove temporary. It gets frighteningly easier and easier to imagine Gideon Rachman’s dystopian dream of a President Palin – the unapologetic pitbull - becoming real 2012.

Where would the world be then? Wishing that it and President Obama had acted differently? If not now, when?