You'd think the Tories would have more sense than to try to rock and roll. But you'd be wrong

ROD LIDDLE

Some time ago I was jammed into the back of a large white Mercedes van and sent across the dead and dusty plains of northern Uganda to see how desperately poor everybody was.

It was a pretty hellish journey. The heat and the insects and the lurking threat of bilharzia and Swedish neo-feminist Unicef fieldworkers were bad enough. But worse, far worse, was having to endure this misery while next to me sat the editor of The Spectator, singing, endlessly and earnestly — as if it were some sort of particularly resonant sura from the Koran — the chorus of 'Money for Nothing' by Dire Straits.

Bump, bump, bump went the Mercedes down the hopeless apology for a road. 'I've got a brand-new microwave oven,' Boris sang with gusto, and then — having presumably forgotten the other consumer durables that Dire Straits were inordinately proud of having acquired — skipped blithely to the hookline, viz.: 'Money for nothing and your chicks for free!'

Now, the Honourable Member for Henley is very good company, no question. And his voice isn't bad, either. The real problem was the song. Dire Straits, you see, are about as naff and irritating as it is possible to get, and 'Money for Nothing' is their most naff and irritating number. You might argue that, really, these are judgments which should be made in the ear of the beholder but — you'll have to trust me on this — they're not. It is entirely possible to be objectively naff and irritating. And Dire Straits are, in this regard, right on the button.

Why do Conservatives have such appalling taste in popular music? Is it a genetic thing? And, given that former question, why do they continue to woo the pop audiences and performers, all the time insisting that hey, it's hip to be Tory, we're down there larging it with the kids on the street? It is so very, very embarrassing; but still they keep on doing it.

A short while ago, the Tory establishment stumbled across a comparatively obscure American rap artist who, it seemed, was very much against the abolition of fox-hunting. 'Da. it's a freedom thing,' he pronounced. Oh dear, what a to-do. This hapless man was feted and fawned over; his inane doggerel printed alongside toe-curling leader columns in the Daily Telegraph. He was photographed standing by a horse, looking simultaneously smug and bemused. You would have been forgiven for thinking, what with all the fuss, that the Right had found itself the next Edmund Burke. Except that even this chap got the hell out in the end, renouncing his previously attributed support for the Countryside Alliance and quietly slinking off, stage-left.

But it didn't for a minute stop the Great Search for a Popstar Who Isn't a Bloody Socialist. At the weekend, the Daily Telegraph unleashed its latest weapon in the war to win over the kids: Kenney Jones. Kenney was once the drummer with the Small Faces, a mod band reasonably fashionable 35 years ago (although even then nowhere near as cool as the Who or the Kinks).

Now, at the age of 702, he's released a single attacking the Chancellor over stealth tax. It's called. er, 'Mr Brown'. Kenney's band consists of himself and some session guys and a man who was in Bad Company during their most lumpen incarnation. Kenny owns a polo club and his hair looks as though it was made out of polyurethane.

This is just a guess: the youth vote will remain unmoved. The kids, I reckon, are marginally more likely to buy a song by Gordon Brown about Kenney Jones.

Here are a couple of further examples to support the reciprocal nature of my thesis: to whit, the least desirable pop musicians support the Conservatives and Conservatives, generally, like the most dunderheaded popular music.

I was at a Conservative friend's house some time ago and he put on the expensive sound system an album entitled 'The Best of the Blues'. Now here's the thing: there wasn't a single black artist anywhere on the CD. It was the Best of the Blues as chosen by the Monday Club.

I remember back in April 1979 reading a New Musical Express feature on the political inclinations of something like 50 current rock musicians. The only one announcing his intention to vote Conservative was Micky Box, the guitarist with the heavymetal group Uriah Heep, popularly acclaimed as the worst band in Britain. Meanwhile, over the Atlantic, the one group to buck the leftish trend and tie their colours to the mast of — of all things — Ayn Rand were Rush, possibly the worst group ever in the history of the world.

Since then, things have got little better. Vince Hill, Lulu, Errol from Hot Choco

late, two members of the Moody Blues, ELO's drummer Bev Bevan, bits and pieces of Genesis, Lemmy from Motorhead, the Spice Girls and half of Duran Duran . . . well, as a roll-call of Tory popstars, it's not looking good, is it?

There was a brief flirtation with respectability in the 1980s, when Ian Curtis, the lead singer of Joy Division, came out as a fervent Thatcherite. No sooner had the public digested this fact than Curtis retired to his bedroom and hanged himself. Meanwhile, across the pond, the seriously credible Neil Young briefly supported Ronald Reagan and, later, Ross Perot, before shuffling back disconsolately to the Democrat fold. But these were little more than blips.

The reason, I suppose, is pretty simple. Rock music is at its best when it is unconservative; that is to say, when it is loud and uncouth and contains within it a degree of rebelliousness, no matter how naive or inarticulate. It is at its worst when mired in quiescence and stolidity. This, perhaps, is why a disproportionate number of musicians practising that most conservative and derided of musical idioms, heavy metal, are themselves Conservatives.

There is light at the end of the tunnel. Lain Duncan Smith, on Desert Island Discs, seemed to make a conscious effort not to appear hip and `with it', notwithstanding his regrettable inclusion of yet another leaden Bruce Springsteen song in the mix. Well done, on the whole, Mr Duncan Smith. You have shown Conservatives the way forward.

Because the obvious lesson is to reject all popular music outright. When offered the opportunity to wear a back-to-front baseball cap and speculate about your favourite rock groups, reply with decorum and a sense of moral superiority rather than with half a mind to being seen as a 'man of the people'. Eschew the temptations of a specious cultural equivalence and speak thus, with pride: 'I am terribly sorry, but rock music does not interest me in the least. It is, on the whole, quite foul. I much prefer Mahler's Fifth, Beethoven's Path& tique and almost anything by Mozart. But thank you for inquiring, young man. And you can keep your baseball cap, too.'

I don't suppose you'll win any votes with such a response, but you won't lose your dignity trying. And you won't bring down the withering contempt of those very people you are attempting to appease.