David Cameron’s speech this afternoon was bookended by TV and radio interviews. The speech itself was an important one.
But the really big political story was not the admission that debt is out of control. Nor the admission that the system does have some fundamental weaknesses. No – it was the simple apology in those interviews.
One of the questions on the subsequent PoliticsHome poll was along the lines of ‘was David Cameron bounced into a direct apology?’ No – of course not. First of all, you can see a pattern across numerous big speeches: the written speech is released, but in the interviews a more direct message comes through – more humane, more in tune with how normal people think and speak.
Secondly, and politically more weighty at least in the short-term, this apology ups the pressure on Gordon Brown. He cannot apologise – for he knows that the moment he apologises for one thing, something else will become the issue. Basically he will end up being asked to apologise for being born.
However, the most important result from this is, for now, only a possibility. In the longer-term, this apology could set the tone for the future. As I’ve argued before, politicians are only human, like the rest of us, and they do make mistakes, like the rest of us.
And admitting there’s a problem is the first step to a solution.
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