It’s time to come out after all these years: ladies and gentlemen, I am a Tory

8 May 2010

Toby Young suffers from Status Anxiety

I undoubtedly feel a lot better for having finally come clean and the question is whether I should help others make the same step. Is there a case for ‘outing’ closeted Tories?

The danger, of course, is that you might get it wrong. So far, I’ve only ‘outed’ one person — the Blairite journalist David Aaronovitch. A couple of weeks ago we were both appearing on The Review Show on BBC2 and we had a political discussion beforehand which left me with the impression he was going to vote Conservative. Later, during the live television broadcast, he made a dismissive remark about the fact that I was a Tory and I immediately retaliated by ‘outing’ him. In fact, he’s a staunch Labour supporter and he has subsequently informed me that my revelation had caused him no end of difficulties.

Another, less controversial practice we could import from the States is the coming-out party. When I lived in New York in the mid-1990s a fellow journalist had one of these. I gave him a copy of The Wizard of Oz on DVD, while someone else presented him with the complete works of Barbra Streisand. Another friend even baked him a pink cake.

So what would you give a formerly closeted Conservative at his coming-out party? A bust of Wellington? The complete works of Ayn Rand? A ten-bird roast? My own preference would be for a signed copy of Maurice Cowling’s Conservative Essays.

The fact that there are still so many Tories out there who haven’t dared come clean about what they really are is testimony to the fact that David Cameron hasn’t quite succeeded in decontaminating the Conservative brand. Historically, the opinion polls have underestimated support for the Tories because members of the public are often too embarrassed to admit they intend to vote Conservative, and I suspect the same will turn out to be true of this election. The modernisers still have a long way to go before we’re all out and proud.

Rather than exposing closeted Tories, our best hope may be to appeal to people’s courage. I’m reminded of the words of Pastor Martin Niemöller, the famous anti-Nazi activist: ‘First they came for the communists and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a communist. Then they came for the Jews and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for me and by that time no one was left to speak up.’

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Christopher Chantrill

May 6th, 2010 8:53pm Report this comment

For a coming-out present I'd recommend a bound set of Disraeli's political novels. In them the newly-admitted Tory can find out that Eton ain't so bad after all, that Chartist babes are divine--and very good singers--and that Whigs are thieves and robbers that got their money from the dissolution of the monasteries.

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