I carry the blame
There are many reasons why I hate the Tories, but perhaps the most personal is that I blame myself.
It is easy to forget, but back in the run up to the 2015 election the Tories were hardly secure in power. They were part of an unpopular coalition; were utterly split over Europe; and had little to offer the country after years of austerity. There was, therefore, every chance that one embarrassment would have ended the party there and then. Because of this precarity, we were lucky enough to receive a visit to our village, in a very swing constituency, from David Cameron1, just days before the election2.
Tragically, it was also the anniversary of my partner and I, an event which we promised we'd forget, and subsequently have spent every year trying to remember. Anyhow, in 2015, I forgot and my partner didn't, so, on awaking, I was shamed into taking them for lunch out of the village.
It was only upon my return I discovered the Prime Minister had been all morning outside our village pub, drinking, and gleefully being allowed to kiss the children of people I knew to be staunch Labour voters. I realised, with dismay, I had missed my opportunity to fake a stumble and spill a full pint of cider-and-black into his lap, forever branding him the PM who looked like he wet himself on the eve of the election.
I can, therefore, but apologise for the last 10 years. Entirely my fault. If it helps, I've done as much as I can since to make sure they suffer as much as we do.
01 May 2015
Notes:
1 For me, I have to say, Cameron is the worst of them, and I appreciate that's saying something. With Johnson everyone knew what he was like, so it was hardly a surprise when he was awful – I blame the party more than I blame him: they knew what he was like and sacrificed (literally) the country to him in exchange for power. Truss is plainly not right. May and Sunak are just technocrats with the unfortunate perversion of conservativism driving their moves. No, Cameron is probably the worst Prime Minister we've ever had, in my opinion. Like Johnson, he seemed to become Prime Minister because he felt he deserved it, quite obviously and rapidly appeared to become bored with it, and for ideological reasons ignored Brown's excellent plans for recovering from the 2008 recession (unlike, for example, Obama), and instead plunged the country into counterproductive austerity and years of weak growth. He delegated everything to ministers, and seemed to put in charge of departments whoever hated them the most. He cut everything that he could, including very valuable anti-poverty programmes like Sure Start, which was widely recognised as doing an amazing job in raising people up. The lot of them had no real experience of government, despite the party being full of people who did have experience. He then proceeded to organise the EU referendum to appease the swivel-eyed-loons in the party, but put zero effort into trying to win anyone over to his Europhilic side, and promptly took the cowards' way out as soon as it all turn sour, rather than trying to sort it out – thereby leaving everything to a situation where there was a real risk of the country falling apart. Yes, I think I can safely say, to me he seems the worst of a terrible, terrible, bunch.
2 I can't begin to describe the people who organised this, but I will tell you that some years later a Tory PM came to power who had a close relative in the village, and I delighted in the fact that there was absolutely no way the relative was going to invite the PM (with whom, as far as I understand it, they had very little sympathy), to be schmoozed by the sycophantic 'bigwigs' of the parish. You could almost feel the dry tears of frustration hitting the Axminster.