There's this woman, right, and she's almost naked, as am I, of course, only three tiny strips of ridiculous nylon covering our modesties, but we're grinning at each other, and it's so cold, feet like bricks: bricks, that is, which are able to feel and transmit pain, and I'm thinking, far from the first time, what on earth am I doing here? Why don't I just lie down in the corner like the bloke in that old hypothermia advert from the 70s? and these and similar thoughts fill my mind, dizzy-loud thoughts, until, bliss, they're annihilated by the shock of entry into the water. You know what I'm thinking. Wash me, thoroughly. I get a few lengths of this bliss, until the deeper, stronger, background thoughts loom up to the front of mind, looming the way that the other swimmers appear, suddenly, out of the mist: physical, inviolable, the collision course with consciousness.
And the looming thought I can't rid myself of this morning is: What Is A Conservative? I blame The Editor of this website, for producing lists which my paranoia tells me are designed to prove that, whatever makes a Tory, I am not that thing. But I am (that thing). So what's up? And can I do any better?
So. Dodge the slow bloke and turn. What made me a Conservative? and then maybe we can extrapolate from there. The immediate reason was exactly that - reason - coupled with adolescent fury. I was so incensed that there could be people alive who could not understand Thatcherite logic (control money supply, defeat inflation, ditto Scargill, lower taxes, Laffer curves, the lot), incensed in the way only a 15 year old can be, incensed to the extent that I would lie awake at night, grinding my teeth, aghast at the absurdities broadcast by The World Tonight, that I joined the North Ayrshire Young Conservatives. And then spent 23 years losing, gradually, bit by bit, almost all of that youthful certainty. So primary conclusion: ideology isn't a Conservative thing. Everyone (I think) agrees with that, but I suggest it goes a bit further. A Conservative is someone who understands that politics is not mathematics, and outcomes cannot be deductively proven given a finite set of policy inputs ("Pull Lever X and Get Outcome Y"). This is my first (anti)axiom of Conservatism: political plans do not deliver desired outcomes. Other stuff will happen. Only an optimist or a socialist believes otherwise. (The corollary of this axiom is that a Conservative detests the politics of the machine, but I've maybe banged on enough about that).
But. Dig beneath that immediate reason for Self-Identification At 15 As A Tory. Why did I think like that, while other, similar children I knew did not? Outside of the Earth, God could see the intricate cat's cradle of genetics, culture, upbringing, early interactions which led me to that adolescent certainty. To anyone on Earth, however, blind to the near-infinite sequence of previous events (and their untold higher-order interactions) which lead to our current manifestation, the only way to describe the process which leads to the human beings that we are, limited in space and time, is: randomness. We are all random Conservatives. I find this liberating, even as I realise that it won't satisfy CentreRight readers, or find its way onto the definitive list of What Is A Conservative ("I follow Archer's reasoning: it's random, doncha know. Hurrah.").
I should do some backstroke, my backstroke is absolute rubbish, but I don't want to open myself up to the ridicule, not like anyone cares, but someone must be watching the swimming pool, surely, someone in charge of it, someone who'll see my pathetic wobbly splashing, if I give up this elegant-ish front crawl? That bloke on the high seat. He'll be unable to prevent himself shouting out You're not going straight (as if) get back in a straight line you're bumping into the other residents of this Lido community. And I ought to be grateful for his urgings, because on my back I can't see anything except the sky (we are all randomly made of stars).
Except we don't have such a system at the London Fields Lido. It's the happiest swimming pool in London. We do it like this: -after you, -oh thank you, -you're welcome, -no I'm slowing down now, you go first, -oh cheers. We regulate our own lanes without input from an External Arbiter. I do not believe our swimming-pool happiness and this self-regulation are unconnected. Axiom 2: a Conservative has an instinctive preference for norms generated organically within a community, over rules dictated from above.
There's an extension to this axiom, a corollary, which is my last contribution. If you were God, and all of humanity consisted of two swimming pools, side by side, and the first was the self-regulated Lido, and the second was the high-chair controlled York Hall baths, what would you notice, looking down? That the Lido is happy and the swimming flows well. That the York Hall is grumpy, and suffers constant collisions and ill-tempered flare-ups (beware old women with extra wide breast-stroke kicks). Because the Lido swimmers don't concern themselves with the entire pool, but take care only to be kind to their immediate neighbours, something rather wonderful, and unexpected, is induced: local care delivers global happiness. You are not selfish to care most for the people you can touch (and love). Such activity will make the whole place better. Without some geezer on a high chair bellowing orders.
That's it, I think. Conservatives (even if they sometimes feel embarrassed to say so, or feel the need to drag up post-hoc justifications to make such a desire seem 'logical') care most for those they can see and touch. You tug on the strings of someone far distant, most effectively, by stroking the back of the person most close. The best rules we make for ourselves. This induces global happiness. Happiness is the most fertile ground for love.
*
After swimming I'm on my way to work. It's such a cold, cold day, the train is sliding icily into Essex, the lake is frozen and the sheep have hidden themselves away, and I'm listening to the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, and I realise I've forgotten something, something moreover which I share with Simon Heffer, a big man but one from whom, in every other respect, I differ: you cannot be a Conservative if you don't love Vaughan Williams. No?
