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Hugo Rifkind

Wednesday, 1st October 2008

Was I wrong to turn down my chance to star on Tory TV?

‘Would you be interested,’ said the startlingly eager girl at the Birmingham conference centre, ‘in recording a message in the Conservative Video Box?’

God, I was pleased about that. There I was, neither a blond female, nor a read- ily identifiable member of an ethnic minority, and still the flunky reckoned I was the kind of person they wanted on film. It must have been the new suit. It’s grey, and sharp as daggers. You know. The kind of suit you might wear if you are an aspiring young Tory, and Central Office puts you up for a photoshoot in Tatler, which they will then sneeringly disown. That kind of suit. Plus, I shaved off my beard the other week, before I went to the Labour party conference. It’s not flattering at all when the flunkies think you are Labour. Not any more.

‘No,’ I said, all the same. Then I thought about it, and asked what it would involve. The girl, still startlingly eager, perhaps fighting an urge to stroke my cuff, spelled it out. ‘It’s for the website,’ she explained. ‘You go in that box, and you have 30 seconds to tell us why you are a Conservative.’

Tricky. I certainly could have given her 30 seconds on why she thought I was a Conservative. Or I could have given her 30 seconds on why I probably wasn’t a Conservative. Only I’m not sure either of them would have made the website. So I just said ‘no’ again, and I wandered off. And almost immediately I regretted it.

I could have had some fun. ‘I am a Conservative,’ I could have said, deadpan, ‘because somebody has to rein in the Jews.’ Or the libertarian approach, maybe. ‘I am a Conservative because I believe in freedom! And enterprise! And incest!’ Would they run either of those, do you think? Would they put them up on the big screen, just before Dave’s speech?

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