Whenever I find myself dreaming about how awful things would be under a red/green dictatorship — increasingly often, these days — the one person who gives me a glimmer of hope that I might get out of the hell alive is Stephen Fry.
He’s a leftie, of course — but, like Frank Field and Kate Hoey, he’s the right kind of leftie. Even when appointed Minister for Culture in the new regime, as he inevitably would be, you just know that he wouldn’t indulge in either the gloating triumphalism or bullying sadism of his fellow Nomenklatura. It would be more a case of: ‘Yes, my dear, dear chap. How perfectly awful for you to be caught on the wrong side of history. Let’s get your little bot bot out of this frightful smelly punishment cell and on to the next flight to America. I don’t doubt President Palin is much more your cup of tea…’
It’s quite a fun game, actually — a variant on one I sometimes play with my dear friend Susanna Gross: which of her gentile friends would have said to the Nazi stormtroopers, ‘Oh, by the way, she’s in the cellar,’ and which ones would have risked all.
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