I suppose I might seem to be a classic example of someone who has moved to the Right as he got older, but I am not sure that is the case. I suspect that the world has moved to the Left and I have stayed in the same place.
My parents were both the first generation of their respective families to get an education and move out of the working class to the middle class. Grandad 1 was a painter and decorator; Grandad 2 was an iron miner. Mum and Dad were both very involved in the WEA and adult education field, and solid Labour voters. To them, and to me as a youngster, the Tories were the embodiment of selfishness and evil. I was brought up to believe that the worst thing you could be was selfish, and above all things had to be fair.
I haven't moved a long way from that position, to be honest. I still believe that selfishness, and the inability to see things from the other person's point of view, is a serious character flaw. What has happened is that the Left has moved a long way in a direction that I believe its founders would be appalled by. My father's Labourism (he was never comfortable with the word 'Socialist', strangely) was predicated upon fairness - a fair day's pay for a fair day's work, fair treatment before the Law, no-one exploiting anyone else, a sense of communal responsibility, the strong supporting the weak, no-one left behind because of circumstances. I can't see much wrong with that, even today. But I can't see any of the original Labour folks - what I think of as 'true Labour' - having any truck with things like positive discrimination, political correctness, uncontrolled immigration, pandering to foreign religions and nannying interference in people's lives, either.
But I a not a Conservative, either. The modern Tory party is not the complacent, middle-class, smug coterie of blazer-wearing golf-club bores that it used to be, but I can't see a home there for me. While there is no better choice, I will probably vote for them, but only on the basis that, of the three main parties, they are the one that promises least interference in my life. The difference is marginal these days, but it's still a deal-breaker in terms of my vote. I'm not an anarchist; as much as I would like to think that Man can govern himself without rulers, I look around at the world and see places where there is no government and shudder. I guess the best decription of my views would be minarchist: the smallest government possible, consistent with law and order, national security and a reasonable infrastructure.
Two little campaigns you might see on this blog:
I love Europe but hate the EU, and would like to see Britain's withdrawal from a corrupt, inefficient and undemocratic proto-superstate.
I admire the BBC for a lot of their output, but I believe their news coverage and overall mindset is biased in favour of a liberal-left agenda which I disagree with, and I object strongly to being ordered to pay for it. I would like to see the BBC sold off into private ownership or paid for by subscription with the licence fee abolished. At the very least, it should be required by Government (on pain of losing its funding) to report the news fairly, and stop interviewing its own staff as if they were the only people who can make sense of things for us. If there is a new Government policy, I want to hear about it from the politicians, not Nick Robinson's version of what he thinks it means and why it is a disaster.
