Country life
Will anyone talk to me?
Leanda de Lisle
The Conservatives have been in power since I was able to vote — and I voted for them. Now I feel as if my 18th birthday is coming round again on 1 May. If what one reads in the papers is true, we'll have a new prime minister: the young dynamic Tony Blair. A man who will usher in an era dom- inated by my generation, a man who will sweep away this crippled government and crush all those repulsive, back-stabbing Tory Europhobes. It is not fitting that they should sit any longer. They must give way to better men. It's so exciting and I long to be on Blair's bandwagon.
But who, in the country, would talk to me again if I were to vote Labour? The urban colonialists living in barn conver- sions? They might. My daily? Yes, she would. As, I suppose, would other long- standing Labour supporters. Then there are the organic farmers. A few of them must hope that a Labour party which seems ever keen on fashionable causes would sup- port them in some new way. I also know ordinary cattle farmers and NSPCC com- mittee members who are disinclined to vote Shambles, I mean Conservative, although they tell me that they may not vote at all. For, like the vast majority of rural people, they fear the Labour party as much as they ever have.
Stalin knew that in order to keep the Communist party in power he had to feed the cities but could afford to starve the countryside. So it is with New Labour. Tony Blair doesn't need the votes of rural people and, if their needs clash with the desires of the urban majority, he is hapPY to sacrifice them. He supports the Right to Roam and a free vote on the abolition of fox-hunting. A liberal democracy should support a range of beliefs, but New Labour bases its policies on opinion polls rather than principle. So, under a Labour govern- ment, we in the country must expect to sec townies march all over our property and ban those sports that have bound commu- nities together for centuries. The Right to Roam and fox-hunting may not seem very important issues in the scheme of things. But, while there is so much uncertainty about what effects a min- imum wage would have, what Labour tax policies will be and so much else, these issues highlight how a dictatorship of the majority could work against rural interests. So, if I want my neighbours to go on talk- ing to me I will have to reverse what many people did in the last election and tell peo- ple I am voting Conservative, while secretly voting Labour. But it won't really come to this because in the end I dislike New Labour for the same reason I dislike the Tory Europhobes: their demagogy. Perhaps I should do as Matthew Parris suggested in December and give the Tories a shock by helping to return the dead-duck John Major to Downing Street. In truth, I am more concerned about what would hap- pen to the Conservative party after a Labour victory than what would happen to us. It seems strange. I believe that to become part of a federal Europe would be to betray all the people who fought for our freedom during the last war. But those who claim to stand most firmly against it remind me not of our heroes, but their enemies. If I could, I would vote for the cream-bun that chokes Chancellor Kohl. Not just to put an end to his fanatical pursuit of total European sublimation, but because, with Major gone, Kohl's actions may help bring the scum to the surface of the Conservative party. And thus a Labour victory could leave me disenfranchised twice over.
But right now I am here again, ready to vote on the threshold of great change. Glo- rious is it this dawn to be alive, but to be young is very heaven. I wish.
'It's almost like they want to play with us.'
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