On hating Tories

There is a peculiar sense societally, and on social media, that one of the few acceptable forms of hatred is that directed at Conservatives.

I was at a good friend’s house recently, watching a football match, and met a new friend of theirs. Inevitably, talk turned to ‘what do you do’. ‘Well’, I said, ‘I just lost in the general election’. ‘Which party?’, she asked. ‘Conservative’. Then the reply, ‘Sorry not sorry’. I chuckled, it was humorously quickfire, but she knew nothing about me. The evening went on and we chatted through halftime and after the match. She was positively charming and interesting to speak to. The conversation turned to dogs, as it often does with me, and I mentioned that Caroline and I foster and adopt them. We’re currently on five and peaked at six. When I mentioned this, an expression of befuddlement came across the face of my new acquaintance. If thought processes could be written across people’s faces, it would have appeared thus: but how can a Tory do something good. It turned out she was passionate about dog adoption too.

No hatred was thrown my way, it was a lovely evening, but I’ve thought about it a lot since. There is an assumption, amongst those on the left, that we Conservatives are quite awful people. As if we climb out of bed, put on our smoking jackets, grab the nearest down-trodden soul and use them as a footstall whilst pouring port on our cornflakes, a copy of Horse and Hound in hand, before going on to spend the day devising ways to get richer and make others worse off. We are, in their eyes, inherently bad people or, at very best, not very nice ones.

I’ve been at many social events where, because of my once relative but now receding youth, the people around me are often far from self-identifying Conservatives. I am the rare creature in the room, not one they necessarily want around but one they are intrigued by. Is he as bad as we think, is probably the collective thought in the room. We wouldn’t necessarily choose to be around one but let’s test the waters. Walt Whitman advised us to ‘be curious, not judgemental’ but people at such occasions are frequently both. Initially talk will be about politics and that’s where it’s hardest, we often disagree, and if wine is involved and the topic turns to something emotive – Israel is the current incendiary one – then things can turn sour. However, politics aside, when we discuss football, holidays, music, food, film, comedy and pretty much any other subject, even dare I say the other social taboo – religion, we all get along famously. I even like dogs.

One porch in Harleston had a sign in the window saying, ‘the only good Tory is a dead Tory’. Replace the word Tory with pretty much anything else and you’d have seen people calling the police. But say it about a Conservative and people walk by, unmoved.

So where does this initial dislike, sometimes hatred, come from? Hate is such a strong word. I probably spat it in anger at my mother as a child, not meaning it and knowing it would cut deep – children can be cruel. But I don’t use it freely now. I reserve hatred for things that are truly an afront to humanity; root vegetables, hipster restaurants that serve food on coal shovels, and Manchester United. I wouldn’t direct it at an entire political movement, much less an individual.

It may sound odd, or arrogant, but other than sitting down to write things like this, I never give ‘the left’ that much thought. I certainly don’t bear them any ill-will. I don’t think they want to purposefully inflict harm on the world, even if their policies might result in it. Actually, I think rather the opposite – like me they want to do good. I just think they’re wrong. But I accept that they’re wrong and would still, quite willingly, choose to spend time with them if, politics aside, I enjoyed their company. Someone’s political views don’t form part of the measure of whether I like them or not.  

On social media, the hatred is at its worst. People are unleashed. It’s usually left on right hatred in this country. America is rather different. There are, of course, some outliers who spill ultra-right-wing bile into threads but when you look at the reverse, it’s not those on the fringes doing it. It’s art teachers, university lecturers, doctors and nurses. Pretty plausible people. Often with words like ‘compassionate’, ‘inclusive’ or Follow Back Pro European (FBPE) appearing alongside their pronouns in their bio. Acceptance and inclusivity is their driving force, unless – of course – you happen to disagree with them over economic policy and the size of the state.

If you put it to someone that they dislike Tories because of differing views on matters of policy, they’d deny it. For them it runs deeper. Words like ‘evil’ are readily thrown and ‘Thatcher’ is often mentioned. They think we are mean at best, downright malevolent at worst. I had it on the doorstep during the recent general election. ‘You disgust me’ comes quite freely from many mouths. We’d never met. It was almost flattering in an inverse sort of way. One porch in Harleston even had a sign in the window saying, ‘the only good Tory is a dead Tory’. Replace the word Tory with pretty much anything else and you’d have seen people calling the police. But say it about a Conservative and people walk by, unmoved.

We need to test and challenge this. Maybe Maggie (sometimes I think we call her that just to irk them – we’re not blameless in this) did some things they didn’t like, or their parents didn’t like, perhaps the consequences of pit closures for their family were stark. Anger I can understand. Even historic anger – I believe intergenerational trauma is real. But here I am, on the doorstep thirty-four years after Thatcher left office, and apparently the only good version of me, is a dead me. That can’t be right or acceptable. On social media, during the run-up to the general election, I couldn’t post a photo of my wedding day, mother, dead father, or cancer-stricken dog without me, or often them, being insulted. The charge? Tory. Well, I’m guilty of that but no more.

Do we have a packaging problem? It’s certainly part of the issue and why we’ve been through many resets that try to shed the ‘nasty party’ tag. Yet, try as we might, it returns. Are our policies, that place much more onus on individual responsibility, rather than big state support, simply seen as ‘mean’? We’d argue that the freedom this affords both in terms of liberty and opportunity to succeed is kind, at its heart it has a belief – rather than doubt – in the individual. But that gets lost. Too often we get sucked into the negative side of the debate. “Getting people off benefits” is a classic example. We lose sight, in the heat of debate, that perhaps there are people that don’t want to be reliant on the state and would rather like a job and the freedom that affords them. To enable that, we need to encourage those who can work into work. Doing this not only gives them freedom but it frees up what is a very finite amount of government cash to do other things, like – you know – build new hospitals or care for children with special needs.

Brexit is another great divider and eight years on it remains so. I’ve lost count of the number of people who fell out with their friends or family over that vote and it’s the remainers who pull up the social drawbridge, ‘we can’t stand to be around them, they voted to leave’. Accusations that those who voted to leave robbed children of their right to roam free across Europe hang in the air. As if that is why people voted to leave – a bitter, vengeful act. No consideration that perhaps, disagree as some might, those who voted to leave did so because they thought young people would grow up in a more free and prosperous nation. Again, it’s never those who voted to leave saying they can’t be around a remainer. It’s those who identify as being inclusive demonstrating they really are quite the opposite.

We Conservatives don’t help ourselves, of course. There are those in my party who delight in disappearing into a Tory caricature. There are some Young Conservatives I’ve encountered at Conference, who turn up in their late teens dressed as stockbrokers, replete with tortoise shell spectacles, and decide it’s awfully clever to get drunk and be rude about ‘poor people’. But that’s not all of us. Much as the lunatics gluing themselves to roads or throwing soup over paintings aren’t all of the left. All sides have their share of idiots. It’s the human condition.

We ‘on the right’, whatever that quite means in these topsy-turvy days, don’t hate those on the left. So why is it ok for them to hate us? Of course, we let people down over the last few years and mistakes were made but the acceptability of this hatred existed before that. And even if it is based solely on the last five years, does even that make hatred of an entire political class acceptable? Do they really need to insult my wife and dead dog?

During the general election campaign, I showed some of the hate-filled abuse I received to a good friend. Rather than their first reflex being to ask if I was ok, it was to rationalise to me why some people felt that way about Conservatives – bringing up the historic anger I mentioned earlier. Societally, we continue to normalise this hatred and not call it out – it seems the few examples of ‘acceptable hatred’ we now see is that which is directed at ‘the right’ or those groups perceived to be on ‘the right’.

One of the fundamental reasons I’m a Conservative is that I believe in people, in the individual. The same is true for many of us. Whether I agree or disagree with someone, I have faith in them to be fundamentally good and to do what they think is right. I don’t think ‘the left’, for all their talk of compassion, has that. For them, the state is there not just to support people but to indoctrinate them with their version of compassion. Seemingly, we’re all free to think what we like just so long as they agree.

Could this be me doing exactly what they do to us Conservatives, generalising about people with specific political views? My wife even called this piece a tad self-indulgent, she may very well be right. But disagree as I might with those on the left, as wrong as I may think they are, I don’t hate them. That they may hate me doesn’t cause me lost sleep, but I do dwell on it and wonder why when we preach tolerance from the rooftops these days, it doesn’t extend to those of us who think the state should be small, our taxes should be low, our borders secure, our nation’s defence robust, and our people free to think and speak what they wish. That is not the voice of evil. It doesn’t warrant hatred. It’s just a different point of view.