The Labour Parliamentary Party is Old so it is Conservative – night still follows day

‘I never dared be radical when young,” wrote Robert Frost, “for fear it

would make me conservative when old.” He was right to worry. The World

Values Survey, a study of 136,000 people in 48 countries, has found that

the old Marxist idea of false consciousness is alive and well – but that,

deliciously, it is self-professed Lefties who do not realise quite how

Right-wing they are. These middle-aged socialists may have voted Labour,

and marched for CND, but their views on redistribution show that they are

keener on keeping the wealth than sharing it.

To our readers, this should come as little surprise. We have long argued

that the facts of life are, as Margaret Thatcher had it, conservative. Or,

as the French politician François Guizot put it in the 19th century: “Not

to be a republican at 20 is proof of want of heart; to be one at 30 is

proof of want of head.”