Given that Peter Hitchens’ weekly column was absent from the Mail on Sunday the week before the general election, Mr S was glad to have the opportunity to hear his thoughts on the election at the Hay festival.
Taking to the Telegraph stage this morning, Hitchens joined Johann Hari, David Aaronovitch and Bronwen Maddox for a panel discussion titled ‘Election 2015: How was it for you?’. True to form, he began by criticising the Conservative government, claiming the Tories’ majority win was down to ‘lies and money’. He then went on to suggest that those who ‘fell’ for the Conservatives’ spin over the state of the economy had lost the plot:
‘You have to wonder whether the people who voted for a Conservative majority were in possession of their faculties.’
Not everyone was taken by Hitchens’ words, with Aaronovitch describing him as ‘idiosyncratic’. This didn’t stop Hitchens from sharing his views. He went on to air his grievances towards those who had read his articles on the state of the economy under the Tories and not questioned him, but then gone on to back the Conservatives in the election:
‘I would write it every so often: “This is the actual state of the economy, this is what’s going on, we don’t export anything, we don’t make anything, we are fantastically in debt in every conceivable way and the crisis is not being solved”. And they would say “thank you very much”, and then they’d carry on, and the next thing I know people who had heard this and didn’t challenge any of the facts would be saying ‘oh yes the Conservatives have done a brilliant job so we’ve got to keep them.’
Whoever could he mean?
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