On the Scene: Mayday!

ON May Day, the traditional day for leftist celebrations (surely an ill-omened day for John Major to have chosen) the Conservative Party of Great Britain was massacred at the polls-literally wiped out in Scotland and Wales, pitifully reduced in England; the worst result within living memory. Oh, what crowing among socialists, liberals, and the ostentatiously muddleheaded! Oh, what kisses and hugs among the trendies of the acting, literary, and academic worlds! Salman Rushdie said that he and his friends were “weeping unashamedly, hugging strangers, cheering themselves hoarse, all reservations and irony swept away by the unleashing of joy.”

Hardly noticed were those who mourned and feared. “Public affairs,” said Dr. Johnson, “vex no man”: but that was in happier times, when politicians meddled less with the lives of ordinary people. “The Conservatives did not deserve to win,” lamented one Conservative wife, “but we don’t deserve a Labour Government.”

AL

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Anthony Lejeune

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British Conservative Party

ON May Day, the traditional day for leftist celebrations (surely an ill-omened day for John Major to have chosen) the Conservative Party of Great Britain was massacred at the polls-literally wiped out in Scotland and Wales, pitifully reduced in England; the worst result within living memory. Oh, what crowing among socialists, liberals, and the ostentatiously muddleheaded! Oh, what kisses and hugs among the trendies of the acting, literary, and academic worlds! Salman Rushdie said that he and his friends were “weeping unashamedly, hugging strangers, cheering themselves hoarse, all reservations and irony swept away by the unleashing of joy.”

Hardly noticed were those who mourned and feared. “Public affairs,” said Dr. Johnson, “vex no man”: but that was in happier times, when politicians meddled less with the lives of ordinary people. “The Conservatives did not deserve to win,” lamented one Conservative wife, “but we don’t deserve a Labour Government.”