Lefty Tory Brits

Arriving in London for a posting at Australia House during the dying days of the Blair government, I was told by our astute High Commissioner at the time that a thing to bear in mind was that Britain was much more left-wing than Australia. The vestiges of Britain’s establishment – The Daily Telegraph, The Spectator, the dry end of the Conservative Party, the few Tory-aligned think-tanks like the Policy Exchange, the Pall Mall clubs – continued to loom large in London.