Ok, cards on the table: I’m a Tory. Not a newbie “oh that Cameron seems like a decent sort of bloke and I’ve had enough of us being run by a load of Jocks” sort of Tory. No, this is someone who was voting Tory after we fell out of the ERM, through the most seedy bits of Back to Basics and even after the “turning up the volume” speech; though I admit if there’d been an election the following day that might have been the exception.
So you’re getting the picture, I’m a card-carrying capitalist.
So why do I prefer lefties?
Maybe I spent too long in a university politics department in the early 1990s but whenever I watch a political discussion show like Question Time or the Newsnight studio debates, I find myself wanting to punch the person on the right of the argument. They always seem so unspeakably self-satisfied and utterly disparaging of anyone who doesn’t earn £100K a year. Now, before I get a load of furious comments saying there are plenty of obnoxious pinkos and asking me to take a look at Comment is Free, I must acknowledge that is true. Derek Draper is the personification of toothache and I don’t think Mao Tse-tung or Mick Hucknall would be top of my Christmas card list either. But this doesn’t stop me almost always siding with a leftie.
I must be unique on the right in that when Richard Littlejohn swatted Polly Toynbee on Question Time asking if she cared about the environmental cost of cheap flights on the way to her villa in Tuscany, I knew he was right but I still wanted to thump him. Believe me I am no fan of her Pollyness but Littlejohn is bully and a relic from a bygone age for which I don’t pine. Likewise – an evening with Jeremy Clarkson? I’d rather turn my moggs Manx.
My theory is that I do hate the state and loath Dawn Primo-fuckface for telling us that our third glass of wine makes us an alkie. As a liberal I feel we should be free to drive fast, hunt foxes, smoke in people’s faces and call women “love”; but it doesn’t stop us being twats if we choose to do so.
