Tories must keep apologising for mistakes, says senior MP in leaked recording
Alex Burghart, the shadow chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, told an audience of party members earlier this month that the 'Conservative Party got things wrong' and was 'chucked out of office' for it.
His comments suggest a split at the heart of the party over how to handle the legacy of the last Government, after The Telegraph revealed that one of Kemi Badenoch's top aides said the 'mea culpas' from the Tories were now over.
In the first leaked tape, Baroness Maclean told Tory members that the Conservatives had 'done the apologies' and should now get on with a major policy review spearheaded by Mrs Badenoch.
The tape provoked anger among Tory members and voters, who felt the party had not yet done enough to apologise for failures under previous governments.
One member of the Cities of London and Westminster Conservative Association put the comments to Mr Burghart on July 9, at a private event at the Oxford and Cambridge Club on Pall Mall.
The member said: 'I do think it needs a bit more of a mea culpa to convince people, and me, a party member, that there is some recognition of how catastrophic some of those policies were.'
The shadow minister replied: 'The most important thing is to show, not tell, right?
'And that the first thing is, we've gone through…Kemi's gone through a period – I don't think it is over – where you have to, if you're asked about it, you say: 'Well absolutely, the Conservative Party got things wrong, that's why the British public chucked us out'.
'You know, we have gone through, [are] going through, the process of learning those mistakes.'
His comments suggest a division among senior Conservatives on how to handle the electorate after the party's crushing defeat at last year's election.
Most members of the Conservative front bench have refused to apologise for the party's record in Government, but have acknowledged 'mistakes' made by Rishi Sunak and his predecessors in No10.
Paul Bristow, the Tory mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, reportedly told the shadow cabinet last week they should stop apologising and would not win another election 'on their knees'.
Some Tories are now looking to the future, after Mrs Badenoch announced a 'policy renewal programme', which will see the party revisit some of its major policies ahead of the next election.
She has already announced that the Conservatives will no longer support the UK's target of reaching net zero by 2050, which was introduced in law by Baroness May in 2019.
However, the Conservatives have continued to haemorrhage support among voters as Nigel Farage's Reform UK party has gained momentum.
National polls show the Tories are now languishing in third, with 17 per cent of the vote. That figure is down six points since the beginning of the year.
Labour has the support of 22 per cent of voters, while Reform UK is ahead with 29 per cent.
At the Conservative members' event, Mr Burghart gave a list of reasons why successive Tory governments over 14 years had been unable to deliver their plans for Britain.
He named the coalition agreement with the Lib Dems, Brexit, the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine, which he said 'led to the biggest energy crisis since the 1970s, the worst inflation since the 1980s'.
The debate over apologies closely mirrors internal squabbles in the Conservative Party during the New Labour years, when Tory figures traded blows over whether to apologise for Sir John Major's government.
In January 2003, then former shadow minister Tim Yeo called for an end to the Tories' 'mea culpa' mentality under Baroness May, who was then serving as the Conservative Party chairman.
Two years later, Sir David Davis told Tory members to 'walk tall' and 'stop apologising' for the record of previous Conservative governments. At the time, he was running to succeed Michael Howard as Tory leader, but lost the contest to Lord Cameron.
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