ninme

The Times - All the best motorists are conservatives, by Michael Gove

Is driving inherently right wing? The evidence, initially, appears overwhelming. Many years ago, in Reithian times, the BBC used to produce a motoring show of quite narcoleptic dullness. The original Top Gear was a programme tailored for those who found One Man and his Dog too exciting.

A dreary survey of crankshaft performance and winter roadholding for every new vehicle on the market made for a show every bit as gripping as radial and crossply tyres on the same axle.

It’s true. I’ve seen some of the original Top Gear post-Jeremy’s hiring and pre-Jeremy’s taking over. It’s frighteningly dull.

But, over the years, something amazing happened. Not only did Top Gear become addictive viewing, it did so by doing something I don’t think any BBC programme (apart from possibly The Moral Maze) has ever done: by moving to the Right.

Thanks to Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond, the programme has become a celebration of individual freedom, capitalist excess and private-sector innovation. It is also laced with laddish distrust of political correctness, nannying and Ken Livingstone-style finger-wagging. Some viewers might find its sensibility just a bit too juvenile, even public-schoolish, with the presenters mobbing each other up and addressing each other by their surnames. But I find it totally absorbing.

Moi aussi!

And then this reflects rather too neatly a whole day’s worth of snippets of conversation I had yesterday (unsatisfied with just reading me, perhaps The Times has decided to bug me):

There may be objective reasons why conservatives and cars (except in my case) mix so well. The car is a liberator, which frees you from reliance on collective provision; it’s a private space one can shape to suit one’s own or one’s family’s tastes and one of the last warm places where you can still smoke (though not for much longer).

Hmm.