As a journalist, I used to think the left’s hatred of the Tories was overdone – until Boris Johnson became PM

I’ve never lined up alongside those on the left who like to snarl about “the Tories” in the same way rappers cry a certain compound word containing an “m” and an “f”. You really don’t need me to spell it out.

For a start, I was a reporter before I became a columnist and that required speaking to them.

You won’t get very far in that game if you treat people you need to work with as if they were birthed from Satan’s armpit.

While I may have disagreed with them on much, I regularly met Conservatives who at least appeared to have their hearts in the right place. Some of them were even forces for good.

I’m thinking in particular of Andrew Tyrie, who was a fine chair of the Treasury Select Committee and went on to bounce the government into enacting some highly important reforms to the banking industry as chair of the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards.

When it comes to MPs, I have always taken care to bear in mind a lecture given by The Observer’s former political editor Adam Raphael while I was on City University’s postgraduate journalism course.

He didn’t hold with the public’s low opinion of parliamentarians, opining that most were good people who genuinely cared about their constituents and wanted to do their best for them regardless of their political creed.

Now? I’m not so sure. Watching the baying mob waving order papers behind Boris Johnson, a narcissist for whom the truth is an alien concept, has changed my mind.

They know he’s bad, at least most of them do. Yet still, they line up behind him, parrot his lies and give him their votes.

Do they care about their constituents? The government’s own reports say supplies of insulin, epilepsy drugs, cancer treatments, and more besides, will be threatened by a no-deal Brexit. It will literally threaten the lives of people like me who require those drugs.

Yet when presented with the opportunity to say no to that outcome, most of them repeatedly ducked it.

The best of them, the ones with principles, have had the whip withdrawn. Some are quitting parliament, some are pursuing their careers with other parties like the Liberal Democrats.

Watching the performance of those that remain? Now “Tory” really is, for me, a swearword.

Yours,

James Moore

Chief business commentator