Why can't my Lefty friends be as tolerant and open-minded as my Jewish friends?

Katharine Birbalsingh 

There is nothing like spending Christmas Eve with an old friend and her family, known to me since I was six years old. She, her parents, brother and sister, wives and husbands, and all of their children have a grand dinner, exchanging presents, playing carols on the piano and saying “Merry Christmas” to each other: a very ordinary scene, I guess. The Christmas tree is sparkling and the turkey is delicious. My friend’s eight-year-old, having played “Jingle Bells” and “Oh Come all ye Faithful” on the piano, plays “I have a Little Dreidel” and we sing, Dreidel, dreidel, dreidel… and his grandmother exclaims, “Aha! Finally one for us!” She grins at her daughter. “I think there is too much bias here… too many Christmas songs and none for our side!” We laugh. This dinner would be a very familiar scene, except that what makes this dinner interesting is that this family is Jewish.

Grandmother is surrounded by her Jewish grandchildren, two of whom will one day have to choose what they will be because their mother married a Catholic boy and, ever since, has taken to having a grand family dinner on Christmas Eve. Does Grandmother mind? No. Why? Because she doesn’t believe her son-in-law is evil.

My thoughts now turn to my Lefty friends and acquaintances who cannot quite accept that I might have some Right-wing tendencies or write for the Telegraph – that one is particularly hurtful – or have spoken at the Conservative Party conference. What do you expect our reaction to be, is always their response. Of course we are angry! Of course we are shocked! You’re meant to be one of the good ones! You’re meant to be fighting for equality!  Then you went over to the dark side…

Erm, yes. I am fighting for equality. That’s why I think we need some Right-wing thinking in our schools. I then spend a considerable amount of time trying to persuade them that Right-wingers aren’t necessarily bad people. “They aren’t evil!” I shout. “Michael Gove is a good man! I promise you! You’ve got him wrong!” And then, for the most part, they sigh, muttering about how I don’t know what I’m doing, I don’t know what I’m dealing with, that I’m some innocent and naive seal, splashing about in shark-infested waters.

And then I begin this kind of undignified begging. But please, just listen to me… they aren’t evil, I tell you! They want the same outcomes as you do… I promise you! Why not listen to a few of their ideas?

But their minds are shut. The Right is evil and nothing will make them reconsider.

Recently I met a man, educated at a top public school, and when I asked him which way he voted, he became very uncomfortable. Eventually he whispered to me: “Labour… But don’t tell anyone!”

I was perplexed. I frowned. “Why? Do you have lots of Right-wing friends?”

The look he gave me reveals how naive he thinks I am. He laughed. “I’m a public school boy. What do you think?”

Are one’s political persuasions really that tribal? Get educated in the private sector and you’re a Conservative, and get educated in the state sector and you’re a Lefty? Or become such a rebel that you reject everything ‘your side’ has to offer and take refuge with the enemy? Is that how it works? How utterly depressing!

Back at Christmas Eve, my old friend’s son plays “God Rest ye Merry Gentlemen” on the piano and we sing along. I trip up on one of the lines and Grandmother corrects me. She grins: “The Jew, correcting the Gentile … with the words of  a Christmas carol…” I smile, thinking: If only all of us could be as open-minded as she is, how much better the world would be.