Country life
Save us from the Europhobes
Leanda de Lisle
Afew days before the election a farmer from the Loughborough area told a right-wing shires MP that he thought the Conservatives were losing the farming vote — in part because of the way the BSE crisis had been handled. The MP's response was, 'So what? Farmers don't matter. They are only a small percentage of the electorate, even here.' That Thursday his colleague in Loughborough lost to Labour in the Tory Wipe-out.
On the Friday I rang a friend and neigh- bour who had lost his seat. The poor chap sounded as if he was in a state of shock. 'The people on the doorstep told me I had been an excellent MP, but it was time for a change,' he wailed. Well, I'm sure he was an excellent MP, but I think that people were being kind. They didn't just want a change. They were running, screaming, from the arrogant Europhobes who so dis- graced their party during the election cam- paign. 'Not so,' my friend told me, 'Europe was a big issue on the doorstep.' I tried to explain that, while none of us want to be ruled from Germany (a mental picture of men in brown shirts pops up), we aren't any keener on being left in the clutches of right-wing Conservatives with rotating eye- balls (another mental picture of men in brown shirts pops up). It was notable that the Conservatives lost Edgbaston in Birm- ingham to a German woman with a real 'ye haf veys of making you eat our rock cakes' kind of accent.
The Europhobes always present us as victims and we are sick of it. Why can't we be a bit more proactive in Europe? And if we Brits are so great why must the Euro- phobes lecture us as if we were a bunch of snivelling children? A habit, sadly, not restricted to discussions about Europe. I was almost pleased by the scale of the Con- servative defeat, for now, surely, they must start to listen. Now, perhaps, the Right is fatally wounded.
And, believe me, the very worst thing they could do is make Michael Portillo chairman of the party. The farmer I men- tioned voted Conservative. He is a hunting man and a Eurosceptic. But, for him and for many others, Portal() is the Napoleon of the loony Right and the Tory Boys. Tory Boy is interested only in what is best for other Tory Boys. He bangs on about gram- mar schools, but parents often have chil- dren of wildly differing abilities. How much better it would have been if the Tories had concentrated on streaming in non-selective schools. Tory Boy supports private pen- sions — fair enough — but the elderly fear having to rely on him in their dotage. So it goes on.
We need a chairman who will come to the shires and lay waste to the Conservative Selection Committees, most of which are still dominated by the Hyacinth Bouquets of yesteryear. 'We want young candidates,' my farmer told me. 'Particularly young women,' I told him. Women don't like to have sex hanging from a rope with an orange stuffed in their mouths. Further- more they are perceived as being more trustworthy than men. After all, who would you rather buy a second-hand car from? A man or a woman? I'm sure we could have had better female candidates than the Labour party. Fewer open-toed sandled types. More business women, who as women still find time to worry about failing children and ageing relations. Sadly, of course, the old bags wouldn't have them. They thought Tory Boy was a nice young man. The kind the sainted Margaret would have approved of.
One nation Conservatism was the Con- servatism of the shires. Now it needs to be the Conservatism of Central Office. Watch out for Tory Boy. A new generation of Baton Tuftons are about to strike back. And with luck some of them will be wear- ing stockings. On their legs.
'We're retired. What do you recommend that doesn't require a lot of chewing?'
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