In 2022, I thought a lot about Tories

Published on 1 December 2022

Are you a Tory? I’m sure you’re lovely in lots of ways, but on the whole I don't understand you. I just don't get it. 

Tory politicians are baffling enough. But it's you Tory voters I find harder to get. What goes through your minds? What drives you to scrawl a little pencil 'X' next to a name on a ballot paper with a Tory logo adjacent? What can possibly be the motivation for actually wanting someone like Jacob Rees-Mogg, or Nadine Dorries, or Boris fucking Johnson to represent you and your community in Parliament? What drives you and your Tory pals to move from that shower of self-important non-entities to a similar shower like the one Liz Truss surrounded herself with, for the 10 minutes she was in power?

What are you thinking, you people who do this?

Are you thinking it will be good for energy prices? You do realise that it's 12 years of Tory energy policy that's got us where we are, right? "Oh the price rises are all because of Putin," you say, even though it's clear that the Russian invasion has affected many other countries besides ours, and while their energy prices have gone up, they didn’t go up like ours did. They didn’t triple in a matter of months. Tory policy made that happen. The policy you enabled, by voting for the idiot Tory politicians who made idiot Tory promises to you at a local party meeting in a village hall, with tea served in china cups on saucers, and cakes made by party members. They're very good cakes. The Tories that Tories like you voted for watched this energy crisis coming and did fuck all about it. Experts frantically raised the alarm and tried to make them do something, but the Tories in government just sat, inert, on the green benches in Parliament. Why would you vote for that sort of complacency?

Are you thinking it will be good for the economy? All those promises about how Brexit would be good for us are ringing pretty hollow now, aren't they? You're probably one of the people who voted Tory, voted to Leave, and now complains about standing in a queue for hours at passport control. You're not thick, you're not stupid. But you're complacent enough to have swallowed all that "Take back control" nonsense, and all the rubbish about escaping EU red tape. The whole point of trade in the EU was that being a member of the EU was what REMOVED red tape. You and your friends voted for MORE red tape. You're all idiots, and you think you're so smart and so right, and this is one reason among many why I just cannot understand you. 

Are you thinking that Tories will be good for the NHS? No. You're not, and you don't give a flying fuck about free healthcare, because you get yours privately already and so do your kids because you pay for it. There are fewer questions to ask here because the answer's no. No, you're not thinking that. You're thinking that the NHS can just die like the patients on beds in corridors, and you're fine with that.

Are you thinking that voting Tory will be better for public services? That a police officer will turn up next time you're burgled and someone steals your laptop from the kitchen table where you left it? Or that an ambulance will rock up to take your husband to A&E when he croaks for breath over the same kitchen table one morning, clutching his hand to his arm where the pain is suddenly indescribable? Shame really, even the best private healthcare plan in the UK usually starts with an NHS ambulance, summoned by a 999 call. So you must be hoping that call gets answered, and that there's an ambulance crew ready, rather than queuing to unload some other poor sod into a hospital too understaffed and over-patiented to accept them. Maybe you're hoping there won't be a rubbish strike, by which I mean a strike by waste collection workers, not a strike that's inconvenient. You wouldn't want smelly rat-ridden piles of waste building up in the streets, would you? "Ah but waste is a local government issue," you snoot back at me, and I ball my fist in rage because there's no point starting another fight with you about how local government finance is tightly controlled and restricted by national government edict. You fools. You fuckers. You enrage me. 

I know a few things you're not thinking about. You're not thinking that maybe the trains will get cheaper – because you already pay for First Class seats on every journey and you're quite happy to do so. You're not thinking about the sewage that sits glistening on our beaches, because the only beaches you visit are in Antigua or The Seychelles or the ones inaccessible by car, that you can only visit when you're staying on Rodney's yacht. Good old Rodney, he's been a close and loyal friend ever since Oxford.

You're not thinking about society – there's no such thing, of course – and you're not thinking about community, and you're not thinking about the country except the bits of it you explicitly own. 

You – you Tories who vote for the Tories who rule us – think only about the wealth you can accumulate, for the influence and power you can wield. You care about paying less tax, on income and inheritance and petrol and gin. You care about second homes, and third homes. You care for yourselves, and for your children; but not for their children, or their children. Fuck your great-grandkids or your great-great-grandkids. You don't care if they live with unbearable average wet-bulb temperatures, because you read in The Daily Telegraph something about how we might have better weather conditions for vineyards and wouldn't that be simply wonderful? Rodney’s place in Sussex may yet produce a wonderful new vintage. Good old Rodney. You probably need to look up what “wet bulb temperatures” even means, but you won’t bother.

You know in your heart that climate change is real and you know in your head that it will change the world for the worse but you don't care enough to change how you vote. You care, but only a little bit. Only so much. Your dear kids, they're so dear to you. But the generation that follows, or the one after that and the one after that? You'll never know them anyway, so fuck them. 

Fuck the future, fuck the poor, fuck society, fuck the NHS, fuck fairness, fuck other people. That's your outlook. That's your way of seeing things. You'd never describe it that way, never in a thousand years, but objectively, it's true. Tories are baffling because Tories are against everything but themselves and their personal, individual success. You favour the success of conservatism, but you see no benefit, none whatsoever, in the success of community.

That's why I don't understand you, you people who vote for Tories. I don't understand your indifference, your denial, your self-centered contempt. You don't look that evil, standing in the village hall clutching your china cup of tea. And yet.