A True Tory View of 18DoughtyStreet

What Ho Proles!

After much fiddling with his cabling and a false start when we momentarily tuned into something decidedly unTory, very Norwegian, and not quite legal involving a young lady and a poodle, my man finally managed to get 18DoughtyStreet working on the old laptop this evening. And I must say, I was a bit shocked at what I saw. Where was the cold hard face of the Tories? Where was Lord Tebbit? I mean, I could see pinstripes, but not as I know and love them.

You might know that, having been to Oxford, I like a bit of intellectual argument as much as the next chap, but, I confess, the debates I witnessed tonight were a bit beyond me. When do we get to kick the proles (no offence intended, my proles)? When do we browbeat our opponents in very loud voices? It was all very poor. Could they not have dragged a kipper salesman into the studios and roughed him up a bit? They only needed to have asked and I would have provided a few Labour supporting serfs from the village. Buy them a pint of Beamish and they’ll take a hiding like you wouldn’t believe.

The problem with this whole Doughty Street venture is that they didn’t come and speak to the Honourable Jacob P. Murgatroid beforehand. Only now might they begin to realize their mistake and see that their shows address neither real Tories nor real Tory concerns. I did not take the Conservative vows in order to turn into a tree hugger, and I do not pay my party fees in order to discuss things with potted plants. I became a Tory in order to tell people what to do. As Lady Thatcher once told me: ‘Jacob,’ she said, ‘you mustn’t shilly shally.’ And since that day, I take that advice as my mantra. Shillying, nor, indeed, shallying, are absent from the Honorable Jacob’s vocabulary.

Oh damn. All this typing has made me drop my monocle in my cognac…

Now, where was I? Oh yes. This quasi-Tory channel. One thing I will say about Doughty Street is that I quite enjoyed Alan Mendoza’s half hour on the neo-conservatives. I didn’t really follow what they were saying, you understand, but where else on earth would you hear the word ‘otiose’ used in a sentence? Absolutely marvelous! Nice appearance of the word ‘vignette’, too. First class all the way; lovely suits, and nice to hear good English well spoken.

You may know, I only started blogging after I saw Iain Dale's booth at the Tory conference, and since he's been building Doughty Street up for so long, I'd started to look forward to it. In the end, it was a bit of a disappointment. And to think I was considering sending him Uncle Ernest's brass knuckledusters as a station-warming present...

All I’d ask them is, in the future, tone down the rhetoric and turn up the hectoring. Perhaps they might offer me a half an hour slot. I could instruct Tories everywhere on how best to reprimand their man or give a yob a dressing down when they come up in front of you at the local Magistrate’s. If nothing else, that’s what it means to be a Tory, and until the people behind Doughty Street address this deficiency in their programming, I will instruct my man to keep the laptop tuned to the Norwegian and her poodle.

Good evening.