Officers

	Chairman  Fergus McGhee, Trinity College
	Vice-Chairman  Callum Wood, Queens’ College
	Junior Treasurer  Christopher Stanton Peterhouse
	Campaigns Officer  Rachael Harrison, Gonville and Caius College
	Secretary  Matt Johnson, Queens’ College
	Registrar  Christopher G. Poel, Queens’ College

Committee

Laura Brazier New Hall	Robert Thomas Trinity College
Aidan SneeCaius	Edward Ng-Cordell Downing
Aaron Schroeder-Willis Trinity College	Mr Edward Turnham Christ’s College
Albert BeardowChrist’s College	Joseph SandersonJesus College

 Kindly sponsored by the Coningsby club, a London-based dining club for alumni of Oxford and Cambridge Universities, helping alumni keep in touch with the Conservative cause.

The Annual Garden Party will be held in the tranquil environs of Clare Memorial Court Gardens

Monday 14th June from 2.30pm.

 Dress: Summer Smart.

£10/£15

Cheques to J M Oxley at Caius.

To those who argue that Mr Laws’ reasons for not declaring that he was in a sexual relationship with his landowner are cooked-up pretexts for troughing that can’t hold up in our liberated 2010 Britain, I say: imagine your family finding out your sexual preference at the age of 44 in a newspaper. To those who say that remaining ‘in the closet’ is dishonest and that if you take that risk you accept the possibility of tragic consequences…well, that is what I want to address below. Mr Laws’ predicament should not have existed.

Perhaps (I think this is the more likely estimate, but the number is basically irrelevant) about 5% of use are more attracted to people of our own gender. When I meet someone, I do not presume that they prefer brunettes to blond(e)s or biscuits to cake (some readers may object to the analogy but bear with me). I usually assume (the epistemological “principle of charity”) that there is a ‘percentage point’ likelihood that they agree with me about various points of information or opinion based on the controversiality of that opinion (what percentage of people hold that belief determines the percentage likelihood a given stranger will). The gender you are more attracted to should be no different. I am going to keep expressing ‘sexuality’ or ‘orientation’ that way, ungainly as it may be, because I think that both of those terms are too structurally embedded: they make too many assumptions about how sexual attraction works which are based on our current cultural climate (as well as microclimate). People don’t ‘come out’ to tell you their preferences on any other issue: you just don’t worry about it. If we really believe that it doesn’t matter whether someone fancies girls or boys, then there should be no obligation to tell people which they fancy. If we are surprised that someone fancies a gender we didn’t expect them too, that’s all it should be – a surprise. We need to stop seeing who someone fancies as a fundamental part of their identity.

I am about to put scare quotes around the term “gay rights”, and again in a minute. The reason, put briefly for the sake of sticking to my main argument, is that this points out the constructed nature of both terms. In a right-thinking culture we wouldn’t need to have the idea of being-more-attracted-to-the-same-gender-as-yourself as a special identity, and we wouldn’t advocate the equality of people who are more-attracted-to-other-people-of-the-same-gender-as-themselves on the basis of natural rights (which don’t exist) but rather in terms of the benefits for everyone that we want to enshrine in rights legislation.

Campaigners for “gay rights” often focus on the importance of ‘coming out’ of ‘the closet’ as soon as possible (the Guardian CiF article immediately following Mr Laws’ resignation illustrates this point tidily). I believe that this approach can only ever be a short-term solution. It perpetuates the idea that people-who-are-more-attracted-to-other-people-of-the-same-gender-as-themselves[1] are under a burden of telling us that they are more attracted to people of their own gender. Instead, we ought to just assume that there is a 5% chance that this is true for any given stranger. This might seem a hopeless dream, but we will never get there as long as “coming out” continues to be an ever more ritualized way of dealing with anyone who isn’t only attracted to other people of the opposite gender in our culture.

Let me tell a story that might illustrate the kind of world that we could have if we didn’t perpetuate this cultural mechanism, ‘the closet’. In my first Christmas vacation home from Cambridge, I had a female friend over for dinner. As it happens, I did quite fancy her, but nothing was ever going to happen. In a conversation with my sister later that week she asked politely, without any pressure, whether we were an item. I replied, “well, no. It’s a shame, she’s quite fun.” My sister then said “yeah. Well, I thought I’d ask since, you know, with couples that have just got together you can’t necessarily tell.” The exchange was utterly nonchalant. My friend and I hadn’t had our hands on each other and weren’t giving off signals to that effect, but then I wouldn’t get cosy with a girlfriend in front of my family unless we had been obviously going out for several months: call me a prude, but it would be inappropriate. All this is relevant, believe it or not. I come from a Catholic family: my parents are pretty staunch, my little brother has me (theologian, orthodox) and our older brother (psychology/philosophy graduate, lapsed on principle) as shoulder angel/devil respectively while he sings in St George’s cathedral choir, and our older sister is comfortably lapsed.

 Imagine the above scenario if I preferred boys and had a boy I fancied home for dinner. My parents wouldn’t bring it up: they’d assume he was a friend like any other in the same way that they assume I’m going to church, saying my prayers, and keeping my trousers on vis a vis girlfriends. Imagine the hypothetical period after a few months of dating said male object of my desire, in which there might be a bit of hand-holding or whatever in the living room while we all play Cluedo (pwamattopots reading this will have to excuse my lack of imagination if there are different courtship habits that I’m unaware of, not having had a boyfriend). By that point, my brothers and sisters probably would have cottoned on and wouldn’t make a fuss any more than I make a fuss about my sister’s boyfriend despite my strong suspicions that they are, as it were, living in sin. My parents might sit me down and have a talk, but it would be the same talk I presume they’ve given, if they have, my lapsed adult brother and sister: be safe, don’t stop going to Mass, and we’ll pray for your repentance.

This is the reaction I would expect from my parents. Before you respond and say they must be very nice normal people but lots of pwamattots need the closet to protect them from their crazy Bible-bashing relatives, let me describe my parents’ political and religious profile for you. My mother responds to news of almost every major scandal or political crisis with a memory of how Thatcher said something sensible or had a sensible policy about this issue, and what it was. My Dad refuses to use an omega in his pronunciation of the term “homosexual”, and refers to “gay rights” campaigners as “homosexualists”. By the standards of CiF, they’re pretty unreconstructed. So why do I trust them to be decent in this hypothetical scenario? Well, I’ve seen how mildly disappointed but ultimately unphased and continually supportive they are of my older siblings. My mother worries about my sister moving in with her boyfriend not because she’ll go to hell for it (the number of the elect is known only to God, and besides, there’s a lot of easier ways to get there in theory). Rather, she’s worried that common law marriage is a dangerous situation financially and young people often cohabit their way out of thousands of hard-earned pounds. Pwamattots don’t currently have that problem, interestingly enough, so if I moved in with a boyfriend my mother wouldn’t have to worry about our breaking up and his demanding half my flat.

Being expected to “come out” of “the closet” adds an enormous layer of complication to dealing with the expectations of family and friends. I am inclined to believe that family and friends can often surprise us with how understanding they can be: as for public life, the Daily Mail (and now, apparently, the Talibgraph as it shall henceforth be known until we can think of something wittier than Cranmer) can shriek but it will be drowned out by defence from saner journalists. In a world without the closet, eventually we would be able to worry less about what people will think about who we fancy. Currently, those who speculate on the gender tastes of others (their friends, public figures) do so within a framework wherein they are ‘owed’ information because gender tastes are perceived to be a fundamental part of someone’s identity. Yet even if my taste in women over men were a fundamental part of who I am (and I suspect that some will contend I don’t feel this to be so precisely because I prefer girls and so am in the majority), I wouldn’t owe my friends or strangers information about this except insofar as they asked for it in a relevant context. Arguably, some of the things that I believe are a fundamental part of who I am, but there is no onus on me to volunteer information about my theism or my moral scepticism or even my political conservatism – except insofar as it is relevant to the conversation or situation.  

Let’s imagine a closet-less world for David Laws. He defended himself (and given his past record we shall here give him the benefit of the doubt) by appealing to his “privacy” which needed special consideration because he wanted to prevent, presumably, some family members from knowing that he is more attracted to men than to women. David Laws argued that his relationship with James Lundie didn’t constitute a “partnership” because they had different social circles, didn’t share bank accounts and so on according to the definitions in the Green Book. Presumably the limitations on their relationship (having a separate social life from your beloved does not sound like the sort of thing an ex-banker would put up with for £40k a year) were necessary for Mr Laws to keep it from those acquaintances who would have been distressed by it.

In a closet-less world Messers Laws and Lundie would be able to spend plenty of time together, sharing the same social circles, and people would not decide that they were a couple unless they volunteered the information. Why not? Because there is a 95% chance that they are just friends, and in that world you don’t owe anyone information about whether you prefer men or not. Speculators could speculate because he is not married and 44, but imagine how they would frame those speculations if there were no ‘closet’ for Laws to be hiding in or not. It would not be a question of Mr Laws’ ‘sexuality’, but more directly of whether he was in a relationship with James Lundie. Laws could then give a range of answers if questioned. Saying that it’s none of our business clearly won’t do with a public figure and a landlord receiving taxpayers’ money (because that makes it our business: if they are “partners” he would be breaking rules). On the other hand, he could say that they haven’t or maybe don’t want to get to “partnership” stage and are fine with their relationship the way it is. You wouldn’t resign for having a girlfriend who’s just a girlfriend but not a “partner”, and likewise for boyfriends.

I have to stop and do some work now: I know I have left undescribed the transition from closet-culture to “let’s not talk about people’s sex lives unless they want to” culture, but this post has already gotten pretty long. I expect it will or won’t get fleshed out in comments.

Celebration Special!

Phew!

Tickets £43 (members) else £48.

Tickets are strictly limited so please email the Chairman and send a cheque to J M Oxley at Caius ASAP.

Evening Dress.

See Facebook event.

• “Hung Parliament Punting”, courtesy of Dr Madsen Pirie, on Friday 21st May (a great way to procrastinate);
• Annual Garden Party (theme to be announced).

I thought this looked quite nice.

This morning, the British people failed to return the Pro-court/Tory/Conservative Party to their proper place running the (de facto) Queen’s parliament. Many different kinds of electoral reform have been mooted as a solution to supposed problems with the current system. I suggest that most of these are inadequate because they have misidentified the problems, citing spurious priorities for our democracy such as ‘representing the will of the people’ or ‘preventing minority parties from being properly represented’. Really the only problem is that of Labour’s inbuilt advantage – that is, that the Conservative Party did not get an absolute majority. Below I have suggested some solutions to prevent this ridiculous state of affairs from occuring ever again.

1) Ban Trade Union funding.

Ashcroft’s millions are a trifle compared to Unite’s (and, I am told, compared to his donations to other charities). Without funding from trade unions, the Labour Party would be hamstrung in its ability to campaign in marginals. As soon as possible, we need to cook up some plausible reasons why union funding should be illegal (as of writing I have not heard of any convincing ones) and whip a ban through the Commons with the help of other non-union-funded parties. This solution is, of course, imperfect: at some future stage ways to bankrupt other parties may need to be found if constituency boundaries give them an advantage that is too tricky for the Conservative Party’s campaign funds to surmount.

2) Create a ‘black-op’ Corruption Squad.

Independents, Liberal Democrats and minority parties (UKIP boo!) find it too easy to capitalise on voter dissatisfaction with ‘sleaze’ because they have never been in Parliament and are not implicated in past corruption (or, in most cases if we are honest, mere unpleasant veniality: the expenses ‘scandal’ hardly had any incidences of actual foul play). One long term solution to this is to have a special team of extra-Party hacks (think tanks, journalists, choice lobby groups) to target ‘anti-politician’ politicians both before and immediately after their election and invite them to lots of juicy parties, dinners and conferences to rust their shining suits of armour until their protests of integrity and financial perspicuity become empty words. Ideally, pampering such candidates and MPs would actually change their characters so that they would become genuinely corrupt, make genuine mistakes and lose their moral high ground. Meanwhile, the Conservative Party must of course become and remain squeaky clean: the flip-side of this policy will have to be some sort of purge of nasty Thatcherite New Statesman types from the ranks of CF and CA leaderships and their replacement with fresh-faced Disraelians who go to church/synagogue and have smiling nuclear families or steady girl/boyfriends.

3) Re-draw boundaries on a by-square-kilometre basis.

Instead of constituencies being based on population and attempting to keep track of population changes (which seems to have manifestly failed as people continually de-urbanise into Tory areas, increasing how many votes we need to win) establish a constituency boundary system based on physical size. Suddenly those inner-city ‘rotten boroughs’ would be swamped by leafy suburbs – or else lots of country Tory domains would be multiplied in their seat-value.

4) Limit the Franchise.

Naturally, suggesting property as a qualification would be too difficult as there will be complaints of ‘regression’. I’m also pretty sceptical of having an educational qualification to vote, since I’m pretty sure the right answers on the exam paper would end up as ‘vote for whichever Party wrote the test’, to more or less subtle degrees. This is a tricky one: possibly it should be based on credit rating, which seems a sensible way of ensuring some degree of economic responsibility without requiring a special course of political and economic indoctrination education. The problem with credit rating is that the only way for young people to have one is to own a credit card, which is in itself evidence of poor financial management skills as far as I’m concerned – but perhaps raising the age of the franchise would be a beneficial outcome. An alternative limitation would be that in order to vote you have to have one or more children and a successful marriage (you lose the vote if you get divorced) to demonstrate your stake in the country’s long term future and your ability to put relationships with others first. I think we would need a few more decades of aggressive faith school expansion before that is a possibility, however.

5) Secede from the Union. 

To start with, we could try persuading party donors to fund the SNP on the sly through the establishment of Scottish subsidiaries of their businesses linked as tenuously to their holding companies as possible. Ultimately, we should be looking for independence from Wales as well: with enough time a similar strategy could be implemented with Plaid Cymru when they have taken inspiration from Scottish independence. The ideal solution, of course, would be a complete secession of Greater London and the Home Counties from the United Kingdom (we could call it Anglia or Albony or something). Imagine what a delightful place that would be. The makeup of Parliament would revert to mercantilist Whigs and landowner Tories, but I don’t expect there would be much controversy since the city boys would want to make sure their weekend get-aways were preserved and the Tories would have lots of investment in financial services and would want to make sure they were getting a decent return. There would be absolutely buckets of money to spend on tax cuts, public services and high wages for the poorest (i.e. cleaners, baristas, and farm labourers). You would of course have to pay to get a work permit or citizenship, so that Anglia didn’t end up with tens of millions of people crammed into the East End.

I am welcome to more suggestions – I expect you’ll all have excellent ideas. Nothing too sensible please.

Election Day!

Get out there and vote Conservative!

The Problem – The Socialist Consensus

There is a theory called the “Overton Window”, named after Joseph Overton of the Mackinac Center, a US think tank. It is described in some detail here. Briefly, the idea is that one starts with an unthinkable and extreme policy, and thus the battlefield of is moved towards it. Thus, one might start by saying that the NHS should be abolished, and when outrage predictably occurs, people will be glad when one “concedes” some ground and settle for significant reform.

The problem with the Conservatives in recent years is that we have failed to take control of the debate. Cameron is a prime example of this – rather than trying to frame the debate, he has simply accepted that he must move towards Labour lest he be seen as too radical. Labour have won the election even if they lose – they have moved the Conservatives towards a Big Government consensus.

So, What Do We Do?

It is difficult to break a consensus. We have got to the stage where massive deficits, punitive taxes and a huge bureaucratic burden are the new normal. The Fabians have succeeded in moving the Overton Window towards socialism to the extent that people believe that any new enterprise requires government support (the idea of a “Green economy” is typical of this).

What we must do to move the debate onto our terms is to offer a fundamental discussion about political philosophy – we must ask whether a man in a concrete office knows what we want better than we ourselves do. Once we establish an ideology, we start a grand national conversation about what the State should do. We emphasise that there is no sacred cow immune from slaughter. We force every government programme, every Quango, every bureaucracy to justify its existence. To achieve political viability, of course, we make compromises. But the fundamental question is no longer whether something should be abolished, but whether it should continue to exist. It sounds like a linguistic nicety, but we cannot build an electorate willing to vote Tory without changing the way they think about us.

I doubt that Mr. Cameron will take this advice, but I emphasise it again. If elected, the Conservatives’ Emergency Budget should be an audit of everything Government spends money on. Ask not whether something should be cut, rather whether it should be spent. Frame the debate. Move the Overton Window. Show the country a real Conservative vision for Britain. The socialist past is only a burden if we allow it to be so.

Why Obama Is Wrong – 1. Democracy?!?

At some level, democratic governments are supposed to be the collective will of the people. But let’s think about that for a second.

In the 2008 election, approximately 63 million votes for Obama were cast. That’s about a fifth of the people. You can’t claim that every policy you want is justified by the fact that a fifth of Americans voted for you, even if fewer voted for the alternative. At the very least, Obama should be saying that Government should be us.

Moreover, this is a rather disturbing example of the belief that 50%+1 should be able to set the rules for everyone. If you’re in the majority, you can get whatever you want; in the land of “we”, people have to give and take. Perhaps for students at the University of Michigan, in a town which voted 70% for Obama, the President meant “We, the majority” rather than “We, the People.”

Why Obama Is Wrong – 2. If Government Is Us, Why Does the State have Special Powers?

Is it right if I lock you up? Can I take thousands of pounds with the threat of force if you do not comply? Can I order a drone to blow you to smithereens? No. No. No.

If we agree with Mr. Obama, then it is morally OK for a large group of people to do things which would be wrong if individuals did them. Indeed, as noted above in the Democracy section, Obama would seem to believe that a sufficiently large mob becomes moral by virtue of its size alone.

There are reasons why the State has some special powers – some theorists might consider it a Social Contract whereby individuals trade some liberty for security. It remains the case, however, that Government is an entity that is supposed to work on our behalf, rather than “us”.

If Government is Not “Us”, What Is?

What can be termed “us” accurately? It would have to be the sum of everyone’s interactions with everyone else. There are two words we could use for this – Society, or the Market. The former implies non-financial interactions and the latter the opposite, but in reality, they are interchangeable. Why? If one stops looking at the Market narrowly as exchange of money and looks at it more broadly as the exchange of our wants and needs, one can include the way we choose to spend our time and amuse ourselves as well.

There is such a thing as Society. It’s not the same as Government, but it is the same as the Market.