Half a century ago, a disgraced John Profumo spent decades helping the poor in the East End to atone for lying about what we would now call an inappropriate relationship with Christine Keeler. Even after that, he was seemingly too ashamed to return to public life.
Well, times change. These days, the price paid for resigning over misleading statements about the discovery of porn on your office computer is seemingly less onerous, and so after a whole two months of lying low, Damian Green is back. Back on the BBC’s Today programme, anyway; back working with an eminent thinktank on the challenges posed by an ageing population, and back insisting that he didn’t really do anything that wrong.
The interviewer, Mishal Husain, did her best not to make it easy for him, in a squirmingly uncomfortable exchange. Had he apologised, she asked, to the writer Kate Maltby for his flirty-sounding texts and knee-brushing, which she took as evidence of someone she considered a mentor soliciting for sex? “If she felt uncomfortable then obviously I’m sorry about that, but I should emphasise again that I didn’t believe I did anything inappropriate. Still don’t.” Asked if he felt like the real victim here, Green had the sense to respond that, “I’m not going to whinge.” But if there have been any dark nights of the soul, or painful moments of reflection on how even behaviour that a man didn’t consider wrong can still leave a woman feeling embarrassed and compromised, they certainly weren’t evident here.
And as Maltby herself swiftly pointed out, that’s precisely the sort of thing that makes women worry that men don’t really get it and that ultimately nothing will really change; that once the dust settles, it’s back to business as usual. It certainly sounds very much as if Green thinks he lost his job on something of a technicality – those “inaccurate” statements suggesting he hadn’t known porn was found in an unconnected raid on his office, when in fact the police told his lawyers – and therefore feels it’s time to move briskly on.
But on to what, exactly? However long the period of sackcloth and ashes, there are essentially only two established ways for fallen cabinet ministers to carry on playing a central role in political life: generating newsworthy policy, or generating newsworthy criticisms of their former colleagues. Those exiled to the backbenches invariably start by focusing enthusiastically on the first – as Green is doing, using his experience of the electoral car crash that was the Tories’ social care policy to inform a project for the Resolution Foundation – but often end up majoring in the latter, as the prospect of a comeback fades. What’s the point, they begin to wonder, of being on the outside and still having to defend terrible decisions through gritted teeth? As time goes on, a lifelong pro-European such as Green must surely be tempted to bring the same “realism” he said he hoped to inject into the social care debate to bear on Brexit too.
For now, he is sticking to the loyal line that Theresa May really can pull off the impossible; that at every stage of her career people said she couldn’t do it, only to be proved wrong. He won’t want to make life too difficult for his old friend, not least because he must know that if she falls she’s likely to be succeeded by a more ardent Brexiteer. But there are plenty of ways of challenging a hard Brexit without gunning directly for the prime minister and he has already urged the Cabinet Office to publish more analysis of the economic impact.
Outside Westminster, it will seem shocking to many that a disgraced politician can apparently slide back into the mainstream conversation so quickly. But politicians have short memories, and journalists in pursuit of a story often shorter ones. The blunt truth is that Green knows where all the government’s bodies are buried and he remains a formidable operator, possessing the capacity and the will to make a difference on the single biggest issue of a generation. Stranger redemptions have happened, however unpleasant a taste it leaves in the mouth.
• Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist
