I live in a relatively well-off part of London, packed with restaurants and delis and far too many shops selling eye-wateringly expensive items that no one could possibly find a use for. Many of the locals appear to work in finance or the media or law. Judging by how packed all the eateries and drinkeries are, there’s a lot of disposable income sloshing around, even during a recession. There are plenty of upwardly-mobile young couples in evidence sprogging away like biliy-o. 4x4s gum up our narrow streets. People jog and power-walk and suchlike. So, all in all, we’re talking the upper echelons of the middle class.
After years of profligate – and useless – Labour councils, we’re now enjoying the benefits of a Tory administration. Services – at least in my experience – have improved, and our council tax bills actually went down this year. (Yes, you heard right! – taxes can go down as well as up, but only if Tories are in charge).
Yet attend any form of local get-together – dinner parties, drinkie-poos, book groups etc. – and you can be certain that the overwhelming majority of the attendees will be left-leaning. By God, they’re never backward in letting you know exactly where they stand on any issue (basically, wherever The Guardian stands).
So, isn’t it sad for Gordon Brown the he has turned out to be such a rotten PM – especially when he coveted the job so fiercely. Global warming is real, and we should jolly well be doing our bit and spending money to sort it out. George Bush was evil incarnate: Barack Obama is lovely and statesmanlike and handsome and wise. Muslim extremists are unreasonable – but America really has to accept a lot, if not most, of the blame for what has happened during the past decade. Isn’t it time we grew up as a Nation and embraced Europe?
If you reveal that you don’t actually subscribe to their bumper-pack of modish delusions, they look confused and start edging away.
Voting Tory would, you assume, be as unthinkable for these people as holidaying at Butlins or opting for a KFC Bargain Bucket.
Since reaching my majority, I have spent most of my life working for organizations that are institutionally leftist, so what these very nice, very friendly and civilized people say doesn’t surprise me in the least. What confuses me is this – how come we have a Tory council and a Tory MP? Who voted for them? Not those selfless saintly souls who work in the public sector, surely. Why would they try to derail the vast, subsidized gravy train they’re lucky enough to be riding on? Unemployment’s still rising, but the number of jobs taxpayers stump up for is actually increasing, and pay rises amongst Labour’s ever-expanding army of non-wealth producers is actually outstripping those of the private sector workers whose taxes essentially pay for the whole shooting match.
So, we can assume that the vast majority of teachers, health workers, local council employees, police and civil servants vote Labour, as well as benefit recipients and those in council accommodation. That’s one hell of a chunk of the electorate.
If, in addition, people who work in the private sector, many of them with children at expensive private schools, most with six-figure mortgages and pricey cars and an addiction to multiple foreign holidays in places where the pound doesn’t buy you much these days – well, if these people didn’t vote Tory at the last general election and at the last local elections, we’re looking at electoral fraud on a scale that would make “President” Ahmadinejad blush!
All very odd.
Unless, of course, they spout all that leftist twaddle because it has become socially unacceptable not to.
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