Letters From A Tory

Dear Polly Toynbee,

I almost fell off my chair this morning when I agreed with several consecutive paragraphs of your article in the Guardian today.  Like many other people with a brain, soul and conscience, I often find your leftist politics extremely hard to swallow.  However, you might be onto something with some of your comments today.

I’m not so sure that the Crewe and Nantwich by-election will be won by the Conservatives.  Nevertheless, you have eloquently described why all the Labour briefing notes on ‘Black Friday’ about how the Conservative policies should come under greater scrutiny will ultimately lead to disappointment for Labour.  The Conservatives are rightly going to focus on simple, affordable and crowd-pleasing policies that are unlikely to offend anyone while giving off all the right signals.  If Labour expect anything radical or controversial this side of 2010, it seems we agree that they will be out of luck.  The problem is, as you suggested, that Gordon Brown doesn’t have the guts to really stake his claim for the job of Prime Minister with anything remotely controversial either.  He’s terrified of the City, he’s terrified of the ‘Super Rich’ and he’s terrified of losing the middle-class vote - all of which paralyses him.  Ok, maybe ’social justice’ might be a nice hymn to sing but it’s hardly going to get the voters’ juices flowing. 

Needless to say you still talked rubbish towards the end of your article.  Your claims of Labour success are mostly flawed - childcare is still too expensive and inaccessible, NHS waiting are in fact rising, aid to Africa is not as useful as sorting out EU trade tariffs, schools are underfunded and crumbling to the ground, the number of qualified teachers is actually falling etc.  Even so, I would like to congratulate you for saying something remotely useful today.  Long may it continue.

Yours sincerely,

A.Tory