BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN
I normally get a short back and sides from the Turkish barbers. They are a sociable bunch, good value and their treacly coffee ensures you depart on a high – even if you’re an eyebrow short. However, this week I gave a local salon a crack at cutting my hair as I happened to be passing and there was no queue.
The coiffeuse holding the scissors we shall call Carol. I’d estimate her age at twenty-two. She looked a bit like Rachel Riley but her interest was not in mathematics. I soon found that chatty Carol was a budding seamstress – she hoped one day to become a celebrity fashion designer. As she rattled on about Miuccia Prada and Stella McCartney I soon began to miss my chats with the Turks about the dire state of Arsenal. Still, the improved view in the mirror and waft of Coco Mademoiselle seemed worth the extra tenner. Carol’s delicate shaping of my sideburns was an upgrade on the usual brushing-by of muggy, furry arms.
Several minutes into Carol’s fashion industry lecture, I asked her how she was intending to vote at the upcoming general election. I was very careful how I inquired. The last thing you want to do is annoy the one holding the scissors – something I learnt to my cost many years ago at school when I trod on the barber’s dog.
“Corbyn,” Carol replied.
“Oh,” I answered, diplomatically. “And why are you going to vote for Jeremy Corbyn?”
In what followed are all the lessons that CCHQ needs to comprehend when searching out the yoof vote this general election and after. It cannot be beyond the wit of conservatives to yoke the yoof vote by combating socialist lies and reverse-brainwashing the vulnerable victims of Pied Piper “Free Broadband” Corbyn.
Here I have bullet-pointed the key elements in Carol’s justification for lending Corbyn her vote:
- Because this election is really important. If we don’t vote out the Tories this election, then we’ll never get on the housing ladder and we’ll have to start paying Trump to use the NHS.
- Because good people on social media say that Corbyn is a good man and Boris is not. (By good people Carol meant celeb endorsements; the likes of Stormzy and Lily Allen).
- Because all my friends are voting for Jeremy.
- Because Boris wants Brexit and Brexit is bad.
- Because my sister says that I should vote for Labour.
Carol had never heard of Jo Swinson. She’d never heard of Donald Tusk. She had no idea what Brexit was, just that it was undesirable and racist. Carol thought that Jeremy Corbyn was a man of peace and had no idea about his associating with terrorists or his recent support for communist dictators like Castro or Maduro. In fact, Carol admitted she didn’t really have much interest in politics – it was her sister who was making sure she voted for Corbyn and Labour.
If the Tories are to have any success with the yoof vote this election they need to do the following and sharpish:
- Provide a clear-cut get-on-the-housing-ladder solution for young voters.
- Nip in the bud this NHS Trump fallacy being bandied around by Labour activists.
- Keep bashing away on the truth of the Corbyn/McDonnell terrorist collusion angle, along with the anti-Semitism angle – it does break through and the likes of Carol detest being called anti-Semites or racist appeasers.
- Make the likes of Stormzy and Lily Allen seem passé. Compare them to celebs with some grey matter (indeed, like Rachel Riley) who would never endorse anti Semite terrorist colluders.
- Expose the “friends” and “sisters” of the likes of Carol. Many families have one – the thick or disaffected friend or sibling who has been brainwashed by the reds and Pied Piper Corbyn. The forgotten – often resentful – ones. Those who jabber on about income inequality and equality of outcome, as if real life was a socialist utopia wholly dependent on government rather than a trade-off dependent on human individuality and variety.
- Finally get the good news out about Brexit – the income flows, the jobs, the opportunities that Brexit brings. Talk about flight capital, the likes of the Peugeot family moving their HQ and staff to the UK and about UK/US opportunities.
I didn’t try and convert Carol. I didn’t instil in her the virtues of conservatism – partly because I wanted her to focus on the job at hand but also because I know full well that the constituency which we reside in would vote for whoever or whatever wore a (dark) blue rosette, save Anna Soubry.
I did leave the salon a tad glum. These Year Zero Carols are a residual problem us Brits have to face up to at some point soon. We so need to put the Hard Left in Britain back in its box and these Carols are the fair price to pay to do so. Looking across at Spain where that pony-tailed rat Pablo Iglesias Turrión has just formed a coalition with the socialists backed by the yoof vote – following significant election losses – that sorry fate could befall us here if we don’t enlighten and assist Carol and those like her.
As Benjamin Franklin pointed out, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
Dom Wightman is the Editor of Country Squire Magazine.