Big girls don't cry. Nor
do Conservatives
Eton apparently taught Matthew Pinsent very little. It is all well and good to be able to row a small boat very quickly, but nothing excuses blubbing like a baby — or, worse, a foreigner — up on the medal podium in Athens. We would all much have preferred that he had come last than triumphed and consequently subjected us all to such wet public embarrassment and humiliation. Not that he's alone among the horribly named `TeamGB'; they've all been at it, sobbing their little hearts out when they win, or come second, or come last. The team headquarters must be dripping with warm salty water. We may trail Ukraine in the official medals table, but we're up there on the podium for freestyle weeping and synchronised sobbing.
This, at least, is the view from some quarters. Our newspapers, having briefly tired of sexual intercourse and its inevitable ramifications, have for some days been asking the question: where did all this crying suddenly come from? And should it be stopped? There was a letter in the Daily Telegraph earlier this week from a chap who pointed out that the Duke of bloody Wellington didn't cry. Nor did Nelson. Nor did Kitchener, when he was whupping those darkies. Why, then, should it be allowable for someone whose greatest achievement is merely to row quickly? And would that Kitchener were among us today! Actually, the Telegraph correspondent didn't quite say all that — I made some of it up. But that was the gist of his fulmination.
I have been in a politically confused state for some years now. When it comes to voting, I am unable to know which of the two bewildering plans to 'offer parents real choice' in education is the more fantastically stupid and irrelevant, the Tory or the Labour. Neither plan seems to be conservative or socialist in outlook, so far as I understand them. The two policies over Iraq bewilder me even more, to tell you the truth. And the minuscule difference in spending and taxation between Oliver Letwin and Gordon Brown scarcely justifies the energy expended on a trip to the polling booth. As a result, I am lost, not knowing where I stand or to which party I owe even instinctive allegiance. Which is why I've been delighted by the brouhaha over Matthew Pinsent (and Paula Radcliffe) blubhing for Britain on primetime TV. Because on this issue, there is at last clear blue water; New Labour approves of the crying, the Conservatives think it absolutely ghastly. So much has been evident from the last few days of press speculation and comment. And indeed, you can all too easily imagine Tony Blair crying. It wouldn't surprise me if he cried every time he watched the Little House on the Prairie — but you couldn't say the same thing about Michael Howard, could you? If Michael Howard won an Olympic gold medal, he'd stand on the podium looking vaguely satisfied and a little puzzled at the fuss.
A few years ago the Daily Telegraph, under Charles Moore's stewardship, ran a rather wonderful editorial called something along the lines of 'Forty ways to tell if you're a Conservative'. It was a bit like those selfrevelatory quizzes women like doing in Cosmopolitan. In it, readers were asked if they concurred with a list of statements; agreement indicated a Conservative frame of mind. One of the statements was: 'I do not know what guacamole is.' Obviously, if you are a Conservative you will not know what guacamole is. You wouldn't deign to eat in the sort of restaurant that served the stuff and still less would you ever order or make some. Mr Moore's list was very funny and instructive, but a little too specific to be of much use when approaching the ballot box. But crying certainly does the job. A general, principled stand on emotional incontinence in men: that's what we need. It was Diana who taught us all to cry — and she was most certainly not a Conservative. Charles is a different matter.
Tom Utley, the Telegraph's excellent columnist, was in trouble a short while ago for having opined the following in one of his pieces: 'Conservatives do not get RSI.' The many anguished complaints only empha sised the rectitude of Tom's thesis: and so here's more clear blue water. Conservatives do not get RSI. And not only do Conservatives not get Repetitive Strain Injury; my guess is that they do not suffer from ME, either — or any allergies other than those induced by foreign climates and watching Peter Mandelson on the television news. If they do possess an allergy to, say, peanuts or geese, they would rather be asphyxiated than admit to the fact. In fact Conservatives do not admit to any illness that was not recognised and documented in parish death records at least 300 years ago. Ague, black bowel, canker, plague — that sort of thing.
Here's another one. Conservatives ignore government-sponsored health advice. They are particularly resentful when it is a sunny day and the weatherman warns everybody to stay inside in case they get cancer. It wouldn't surprise me if Conservatives took their protests to the extreme of never wearing sunblock. Further, they are mystified and bored when told, on hot days, that the ozone count is very high and they might therefore choke to death if they venture outside. Nobody who votes Conservative wishes to have anything to do with the ozone count. No Conservative really believes there is such a thing.
Conservatives do nothing in public. They do not eat in public, urinate in public or perform sexual acts in public — and of course they do not cry in public. They will not submit to the assuaging of any bodily or spiritual needs if they think that other people are looking. If the truth be told, they would rather not be out in public at all.
What we're beginning to build up here is nothing more than the picture of an individual — and that's the crucial term — who is mistrustful of government interference in his or her life, who behaves with moderation and even reserve in front of his fellow men and is loath to describe himself as a victim of, well, anything. There may also be a caution or a suspicion about the notion of society — i.e., other people — in general; certainly a degree of sangfroid. It is the description of a person who would not, I think, embrace the title of 'compassionate' or 'caring' Conservatism, believing such things to be a matter for the individual rather than the state. It is quite an attractive picture, I think — and a rather better reason for voting Conservative than anything which might appear in the party's manifesto at the next general election.
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