30) Cooking, voting and KP.

Last week, I spent election night glued to the radio app on my i-phone in my bedroom in a Tuscan country villa.  I was staying there whilst on a cookery course with ‘Baking with Maria’. (Google her and book up: she’s brilliant.)

It took me back to the dark winter mornings of the distant past when, as a boy, I used to lie under my bedclothes at half past five in the morning with my red Roberts Radio, listening to Test Matches being broadcast from Australia. Complete with intermittent whistling effects  the commentary faded in and out as it travelled down the below-the-ocean cable – this was pre-satellite – that linked the Antipodes with the motherland. (At least, I presume that was how it was done.)

There was an electric  heater on my bedroom wall, with two wire elements glowing red hot – no central heating either. They were, however, so ineffective that there was ice on the inside of the single glazed Crittall windows. But it was so unbearably tense waiting between the whistles and the static for news of whether the next ball from Truman or Statham  had got through the defences of Harvey or O’Neill, or been carted over square leg, that I don’t remember it ever being that chilly. (Mind you, the striped winceyette pyjamas may have had something to do with that.)

It was a good deal more comfortable on a balmy May night in Tuscany but before 11pm (an hour ahead in continental Europe, remember) no less nerve racking. Then the news broke of the exit poll, and  I was as thrilled as I might have been in 1960 if Lord Ted had scored a hundred at the MCG.

And then the actual result turned out to be even better than the exit poll predicted. It was a “and Dexter reaches his double century with an effortless straight drive for six” kind of  a night.

Actually maybe better. Because a Test match defeat, though temporarily distressing, would not have robbed me of a penny of my pocket money, whereas the Labour government I was fearing would, I am fairly certain, have cost me a lot more than the price of a Sherbert Dab and a Beano.

Of course not everyone was as pleased as I was with the Conservative win. Prior to the result I had predicted how the other people on the cookery course would have voted. (See post 29.) As it turned out I was about as accurate as the pollsters were in predicting the national result. I got six out of seven of them wrong in one way or the other, and the seventh may have been wrong too, but she clung doggedly to her ancient and inalienable right to keep her vote secret.

Owen Jones, baby faced – why does that irritate me? - arch lefty columnist of The Guardian was particularly disappointed. He wrote:

“For us (the left), the starting point is, people’s lot in life is improved by making common cause with those with similar problems, hopes and ambitions. Our power is greater combined than when we are alone..”

When he wrote ‘people’s lot in life’  (ungrammatically I thought) I presume he meant ‘one’s lot in life.’ This distinction isn’t just a pedantic niggle; it helps explain the point I want to make, which is that, like me, Owen Jones believes self-interest – one’s interest - rules, even though he would flatly deny that.

‘One’s lot in life is improved by making common cause with those with similar problems.’  His intention I think, was to make the case for the collective rather than the individual. But in fact, he concedes that the appeal of the collective lies in what it does for the individual. At bottom, it’s all about self-interest. Owen Jones and I might argue about what is in one’s self-interest, but, as he shows, self-interest is the driver. ”Our power is greater than when we are alone.” Again, the motivation is that individual benefit is increased by being part of the collective. This is the appeal that trade unions make to would-be members. ‘You will be personally  - individually – better off  if you throw in your lot with us.’ Why else would anyone ever join if that weren’t the case?

It isn’t a matter of selfless sacrifice to a cause, as the left often seems to claim. It is all about the interest of oneself. It seems to me unarguable and totally logical: a sort of social Darwinism.

The question one has to answer – and which one does answer in the solitary  quiet of the voting booth – is what is one’s self interest?

I believe in voting out of enlightened self–interest. That doesn’t necessarily mean voting for short term economic gain; you might for instance be so concerned about global warming that you thought it was in your enlightened self-interest to vote Green, no matter what you thought was in your short-term economic self-interest. What’s the point of a bigger, more energy-consuming house and jetting off on a foreign holiday if you think greenhouse gasses are going to finish you off unless radical measures are taken? Or  you might lie at wake every night worrying about the people who have to go to food banks. In that case, in order to sleep easily, it probably would be in your enlightened self interest to vote for a party that vowed to put an end to food banks.

In fact, I did – briefly - consider voting for the LibDem candidate in my constituency of Hampstead and Kilburn, Maajid Nawaz. He is the ex-Muslim radical turned moderate head of the Quilliam foundation, often seen talking very good sense on Newsnight and suchlike. I think he is an  impressive guy and there  would be a lot to be said for having  such a  compelling advocate of Muslim moderation in parliament. In other words, given the danger of terrorist crime in London,  I could see that it might be well be in my enlightened self interest to have him as an MP.

Still, I put that idea out of my mind reasonably quickly. As usual, it was ‘the economy, stupid’ that was the critical factor. And I was so certain there would be a costly downside – for me - to an Ed and Ed government, I decided that self interest demanded I put my X against the Conservatives. I only hope it turns out to have been an enlightened choice.

And whilst on the subject of  self interest and the collective, and coming back to cricket, what about KP, the ultimate individualist and the collective interests of the England cricket team?

What indeed.