Charles turned 18 during the Winter of Discontent, the detritus from his birthday party lying uncollected on the mean streets of London SW6 throughout Christmas and New Year. Since then, he has been eligible to vote in 12 general elections, 16 local elections and nine European Parliamentary elections. He has confidently voted Conservative in all 37 of them, the very antithesis of a ‘shy Tory’.
Charles’s parents had a weak spot for Jeremy Thorpe, the dog-murdering Liberal, but studying Economics A-level from 1976-1978 turned their son into a lifelong Tory. Labour’s IMF bailout; Labour’s inability to tame the unions; Labour’s swingeing taxes on wealth creation – the socialists simply couldn’t be trusted with the economy. Margaret Thatcher’s Conservatives, on the other hand, clearly knew what they were talking about. For the first time in Charles’s life, his age consistently outstripped the rate of inflation. As for unemployment, the other half of the era’s ‘twin evils’, it didn’t trouble him unduly, having never been south of the river, to Brixton, or north of the Watford Gap, to Toxteth. He became a City trader just in time for the ‘Big Bang’ in October 1986. Thatcher’s deregulation of the London Stock Exchange led Charles to acquire, in rapid succession, a townhouse in Chelsea, a holiday home in Salcombe, a wife, two children and gout. There was no world in which he would allow a Foot or a Kinnock or a Jenkins to roll forward the frontiers of the state and take back what was his already (although they were welcome to the gout).
Charles’s small-c conservatism is, however, primarily social, not economic. While he might struggle to articulate exactly what he stands for, beyond a fuzzy notion of family values, sound money and lightly worn patriotism, he can tell you in no uncertain terms what he opposes. The women of Greenham Common. Northerners. Americans. Human rights barristers. Damien Hirst. Guardian columnists. Guardian readers. Peter Mandelson. This list has been expanded since the turn of the millennium to include the Dome, the Euro, the Stop the War coalition, Harriet Harman, tofu, Welsh people, Islington, chai lattes, wind farms, Peter Mandelson (again), taking the knee and Amol Rajan. He has had a number of letters published on these topics in the Daily Telegraph, some of them framed in the downstairs loo in Salcombe.
Charles is rare among his circle in having never flirted with an alternative at the ballot box. Indeed, he prides himself on being in and out of the polling booth within a minute, Monty’s lead looped on a railing outside while he skims past the Lib Dems with the double-barrelled names to find the Conservative candidate. Only once has he been told off by the presiding officer for humming the chorus to Stealers Wheel’s 1972 hit as he picked up the pencil: ‘Clowns to the left of me/Jokers to the right/Here I am, stuck in the middle with you.’ Veronica, a freewheeling spirit, has not always been so steadfast. In 1997 and 2001 she flirted with Tony Blair’s New Labour, seduced by his Fettes-Oxford-Estuary vowels and verbless sentences. Only in 2005 did she come round to her husband’s point of view that the man was a fraud. David Cameron’s quip that he was the ‘heir to Blair’ almost drove her into the arms of Nick ‘no more than 30’ Clegg.
Charles’s suspicions of ‘call me Dave’ ran rather deeper. Among the many things Charles wanted to do to hoodies, giving them a hug was not among them. Did gay marriage threaten his own? Did Cameron actually believe in all ‘the green crap’? Could you be described as part of the Notting Hill set if you lived in North Kensington? Charles wasn’t sure he knew the answers to these questions, but he was absolutely certain that he preferred looking at pictures of SamCam on the front pages than at Ed Miliband. Veronica could threaten to spoil her ballot paper by voting Green until she was red in the face, but Charles would always be a true blue.
Secretly, Charles actually rather admired Cameron’s gumption in calling an in-out referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union. Similarly bullish negotiating tactics in the world of finance had seen him amass a small fortune. He was no starry-eyed Europhile, but his vague, unexamined Burkean principles of ‘change in order to conserve’ precluded a complete rupture with Britain’s largest trading bloc. Perhaps the rest of his golfing foursome would finally see sense and stop admiring those fruitcakes and loonies in UKIP once the country had voted overwhelmingly for Remain.
The last decade has been a testing time to be a steadfast Tory. For a while, Charles played golf alone. He also had to sell their house in the Dordogne when the 90-day rule came into force. He didn’t think much of Theresa ‘nasty party’ May or Boris, the liberal London mayor, let alone Truss or Sunak. But still, he keeps the faith. None of them are as bad as a Labour party that would take the country back to the 1970s or the latest Farage vehicle which would take them goodness knows where. All in all, Charles tells Veronica, Badenoch’s not doing a bad job. One day, he’s sure, the natural party of government will be back where it belongs, just as it has been for 32 of the 47 years of his adult life. Until then, he plans to spend much of his retirement abroad, checking the regulations about postal votes before he leaves. At heart, Charles is a One Nation Tory, and for the winter months, that nation is going to be the United Arab Emirates.
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