Ed Vaizey, the former culture minister, was quoted recently in the Torygraph as saying the arts Establishment in Britain was suffering from relentlessly Left-wing groupthink. As someone who's laboured in this field in a minor capacity, my response to this apercu was of the No-Shit-Sherlock variety.
That's why, after five years blogging under my real name, with a modest but growing readership, I've finally become too worried about who might be reading it, and opted instead for the title Voice of Peason (Peason being Molesworth's "grate friend" in How To Be Topp, and other deathless titles from the pens of Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle).
It's a shame that Britain now has to be like this.
Artists are prone to Left-wingery for a variety of reasons. They - we - want to be nice. We're concerned with morality. We wish resolutely to create and interpret the world on our own terms. Those terms do not necessarily include close study of the externalities, which can get in the way of our vision. We also find the sobering nuts and bolts of economics somewhat tedious; I used to be the same, but then I became interested and have never looked back. As Mrs Thatcher said, the facts of life are Conservative.
Why is it that the Left hate the Tories so much? Despite thirty years as a Lefty, I still can't answer that satisfactorily. I suppose I thought the Tories were mean, favoured the rich and hated the poor. If that were true it would make Conservatives eminently dislikeable. In fact because the Tories tend to run the economy better than Labour they provide more jobs, and because they are more tight-fisted they tend to run public services on a more sustainable basis. But these are arguments that, in my experience, no-one on the Left wants to hear. Speaking to friends I detect a refuge taken in self-righteousness, as if the more they hate the Tories for their alleged heartlessness the better it makes them feel about themselves.
So what do I believe, and do my beliefs make me repellent?
I am in favour of free-speech unless it threatens or might cause violence; I don't believe anyone has the right not to be offended.
I believe we can't afford our public services in an age when we're living well into our 80s; in the long run the country must live within its means.
I don't care what colour someone's skin is, but I do care very much what they do, and I don't think we should be afraid of saying we don't like someone's culture. I'm baffled why we let into Britain so many people who persist in clinging to the practices which made their own countries such a mess.
I don't think we should be ashamed of our imperial past which, as well as much that's bad, included action to stop slavery and exporting some of the best aspects of our culture; we always need to ask what the countries we colonised would have been like if we had left them alone.
I'm opposed to Scottish independence because it would make Scots dramatically poorer, but I'm pleased we voted to leave the EU because whilst it benefits me, I can see around me all the time the deleterious consequences of uncontrolled migration for people at the bottom end of British society.
If these views sound anathema, please don't deprive yourself of the opportunity to listen to someone who disagrees with you.
