Why I'm not a Tory
From Mr James Morgan Sir: I am inspired, as a 62-year-old homeowner in a green suburb, by your essay on the virtues of the Conservative party (lust say no to Tony Blair', 2 June) to explain why I could not vote for it.
'Save the pound' was a worthless slogan to someone who has spent many decades of life suffering under, mainly Tory, chancellors who so devalued and debauched it that it is now worth about a 20th of its value of 50 years ago.
'Let me take you to a foreign land' made me scream, 'Yes please!' A land where one waits a day for an operation and whose trains deliver one on time and safely at one's destination, a land where two people can spend a night at a charming country hotel for £50 and eat a fine meal for £20 each. I thought of France.
I cursed the canvasser who told me that 'they' wanted to 'take us over', and who plainly believed that our neighbours have extinguished their histories.
I could not vote for a party whose only social model is the United States, a land where a hospital is knocked down when its owners find that there are too few privately insured customers to make it viable, a land where an 18-year-old can play with an AK47 but not a glass of beer.
In short, I cannot support a party that really believes its nationhood is incarnated in a cheap alloy coin, that loathes foreigners and is appalled by everything, apart from the grisly baroness, that has happened since 1963.
If people like me are so repelled, is it surprising that those who are poorer, that those who are not wedded to the ideals of an English past, that those who have no interest in cricket, ale or the stock market, and who have never read The Spectator, find it totally irrelevant?
James Morgan
London SW13
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