Country life
Mean hearted
Leanda de Lisle
You're not a Conservative, Leanda. You're just not,' a friend of many years informed me after I'd told him I voted Conservative on 1 May. He obviously felt rather let down. 'Well,' I said doubtfully, 'I suppose I'm not a Conservative party mem- ber, but I've always voted for them.' Whether I do so again remains to be seen. The Conservative party is behaving like an embittered ex-spouse. Its MPs rake over old arguments and cast around for people to blame for their empty political lives. There is a meanness at the heart of the party. Perhaps that meanness was always there, but now the party wears it on its sleeve.
The leadership election was not an edify- ing spectacle in any respect. But I particu- larly disliked the whispering about William Hague's sexuality. Not because I don't enjoy gossip (I do, I do), but because I'm so depressed by the sordid homophobia it drew attention to. I really don't believe the majority of people in this country would mind being represented by a homosexual MP, or even a homosexual PM. I've had heterosexual shires' MPs asking me over dinner, 'How could they represent the fam- ily?' Perfectly well, I would think. They are human beings, aren't they? They have par- ents and siblings and are a part of the wider community, like everyone else.
Perhaps a homosexual MP would be more likely to try and lower the homosexu- al age of consent to 16 — a move I would disapprove of. But heterosexual MPs have already liberalised our abortion laws to a degree I find quite unacceptable. And actu- ally the candidate whom I found most dis- tasteful during the last election was Adrian Rodgers, head of something called the Conservative Family Institute. He appeared to be one of those Christians who miss the entire point of Christianity. You could just seem him pinning triangles on homosexuals and stoning women for adul- tery. I don't know how anyone could have been surprised to see the voters of Exeter swinging to the left and voting pink. Well, actually I do.
Some people simply have to dwell on what homosexuals get up to in bed. Why that is, I don't know. Its not as if homosex- ual MPs snog their partners for the camera, as the heterosexual Piers Merchant MP did, to universal revulsion. But dwell away they do, and they imagine everyone else dwells as well, when the truth is everyone else is much more interested in whether their MP is doing a good job than whom he is sleeping with and how. If details are foisted on them, it's a different matter. Not because they are filled with moral outrage (unless the subject told lies or was horrible to his wife), but rather because it's quite difficult to take someone seriously when you've seen (or imagined) them without their knickers on.
Anyway, before The Spectator's lawyers start complaining, I should point that Mr Hague is heterosexual and the only 'evi- dence' for him being otherwise is his rela- tively long bachelorhood and his friendship with other bachelors. I'd say Mr Hague's main problem as a politician is that he's about as exciting as Anaglypta. Although he's so much younger than Tony 'Tone' Blair, there is something peculiarly dated about him — he could be one of the mid- dle-aged politicians who applauded his famous speech in the Seventies. Whatever his enemies might think, this is one man who could do with a British Airways-style makeover and a little camping up. Perhaps he fears that letting down his remaining hairs would embarrass Conservative voters. But it's difficult to imagine that our faces could be a deeper shade of puce than they are now.
Because of two murders outside his flat, Jeffrey Bernard is unable to file this week `I've got nothing that works.'
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