Prince Harry: another Tory missed opportunity

Reading Jon Snow and Guardian columnists' ­ - mostly female, strangely enough - sour and sorry reactions to the Prince Harry story reminded me of why I am still, deep down, a Tory.

This preference is not primarily rational. It is primarily emotional, rather like Edmund Burke's hatred of the French revolutionaries who rained down insults on the head of Marie Antoinette.

"The age of sophisters, economists and calculators has succeeded," he cried, "and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever". All too true, if the Prince Harry contretemps is anything to go by.

Fortunately I don't believe it is. For the great majority, Prince Harry's determination to fight for Queen and country was a shining light in a darkening world. Only the political class saw it as a problem.

In the old days, the doubters

would've been left-leaning political types, with the Tory big battalions backing the prince. Sadly no longer. For today there are as many unimaginative sophisters among Tory MPs as New Labour ones.

So the political class lacks cavaliers of all sorts. Which is a pity because if David Cameron had come out with a simple statement that if Her Majesty was willing to let her younger grandson do his duty, then that should be the end of the matter, the whole nation would have cheered.

When it comes to economics and sociology, Tories will always be on the wrong foot. But when it comes to history, their secret weapon, banging the drum, and hearing and heeding ancestral voices (in this case, Shakespeare's), then they are on the high ground where none can assail them.