Being a Tory does not make you a bad person

Don’t mind me, while you’re demonising the Tories, I was just over here, voting for Satan.

Shit, everything is on fire! It’s the rapture – fuck!

Oh no wait, DC is back in number 10. The Conservatives won a majority. S-Club haven’t reformed. Boris hasn’t murdered any babies. Chill out. And stop telling me I’m a bad person.

This man really likes bikes

I’m not a bad person because I voted Conservative. I voted to decrease the deficit. I voted to raise the basic state pension by 2.5% a year. I voted to increase the health budget by £8bn by 2020.

I didn’t vote for closing the NHS, I didn’t vote for free champagne for all FTSE 100 CEO’s, I didn’t vote to “literally kill vulnerable people”. I didn’t actually vote for Satan. I voted for the party that I think this country needs.

the Tories, an artist’s impression

If you honestly believe that makes me a bad person, then please believe that. But I would really like to see your model of a good person.

I didn’t vote Conservative for low taxes so I can keep my mansion while everyone else can live in a slum. I don’t even have a mansion. It’s a townhouse.

Yeah, you know what, a small minority of Tory voters probably did vote for that reason. Some Tory voters are genuinely bad people. Some Labour voters are bad people too, some of them are great. It’s not the box they ticked on their election ballot that determines that.

Conservatives aren’t nasty, people are nasty. Labour voters aren’t good people, people are good people. And people have different priorities, beliefs and means of achieving their ends.

dynamic duo, sort of

In 2010 government spending was 100 billion on the NHS. In 2015 this actually increased to 130 billion. I like that. I think that’s cool. Do you think that makes me bad? Do you think the electorate are literally evil for liking that? Really?

The economy grew by 2.6% in the UK in 2014. I also like that. I have faith in the Conservatives for maintaining relative levels of economic growth. I have more faith in them than I do in Labour in this capacity. That’s another reason I voted Conservative.

I could make almost the exact same argument about Labour. Just using different policies and different statistics. Because non-contextually selecting statistics and facts to support beliefs is an easy thing to do. And we’re all guilty of doing it. 


A pretty solid finding of social psychology is that people will always find a way to believe something they want to believe. I do that, you do that, we all do that. But I’m not calling anyone a bad person for their belief that Labour would be a better government for Britain. Because that’s absurd.

Can we think about the good things the Tories have achieved? Can we reflect on the mistakes made by all parties? Yeah, I hate the bedroom tax and I really don’t want to leave the EU. But nobody is going to agree wholeheartedly with any manifesto. I am so prepared to admit to the shortcomings of a Conservative government. I am prepared to consider the relative benefits each party can give us. I am prepared to weigh this up and make a decision about what I want from our government.

Katie Hopkins leaving the UK; a very good reason to vote Labour

I’m not moralising, I’m not telling anyone whether we should be angry, or whether we should be more active, or whether we should be more engaged. I’m just asking you to consider the possibility that Tory voters are not by default bad people. I might be a bad person, but that would be merely incidental.

Some Tories are privileged white males, yep, cool – thank you for your insight. Some Labour voters, a lot of people reading this article I imagine, are also privileged white males. Do you know who else voted Tory? 36% of the population! Shit! It’s the tyranny of the evil-white-cis-male-oppressor again. Oh no wait, it’s the working class, it’s women, it’s ethnic minorities too.

No party is perfect. No party will be the indisputable moral saviour of Britain. The bedroom tax is odious. Cutting benefits is sad and maybe not the best way forward. The country isn’t going to be absolved of all moral transgressions with Labour or LibDem or Greens in power. In the same way that Conservatives aren’t going to do that either. But I am sick of people occupying the moral high ground because for some convoluted and laboured reason they see their party ridding Britain of all immorality and filling it with biscuits. God Ed Miliband loves biscuits.

This is heartwarming

I suggest you step down off your fucking massive moralising horse and understand that there are reasons for voting Conservative, aside from “hating the poor and immigrants”, and the biscuits. Maybe, on balance, you think the reasons to vote Labour are stronger, and that’s cool because there’s loads of good reasons to vote Labour. In the same way that there are loads of good reasons to vote Conservative.

But you know what, Conservatives are in power now, and guess what, the world isn’t on fire and we still have biscuits #notallbiscuits.