Mum, dad, I have to tell you… I’m a Tory
When Emma and Eddie’s son Dylan comes home from university, prewarning them that he needs to have a “deep and meaningful chat”, they are convinced he is going to tell them he is gay. As self-described “openminded” liberals, they are more than OK with this – they are practically excited. “Maybe he could get involved in the LGBT community in town,” Eddie exclaims. “Wasn’t there a Pride stall at the country show last year?”
Dylan arrives home; Emma puts a bottle of sparkling wine in the fridge ready to toast his announcement. And then he delivers the news: “I’ve come to realise that I’m…” he begins, “well, I’m, like, a Conservative.” So removed is this from the politics he was brought up with that Emma and Eddie can only cough and splutter in response. The chilled fizz is returned to the cupboard.
Since Things Can Only Get Better, his 1998 memoir of “helping Labour lose at every level”, John O’Farrell has become beloved for his wry political satire. His debut bestseller was later followed up with the humorously titled Things Can Only Get Worse?; then came several novels, including 2012’s The Man Who Forgot His Wife, and the scripts for the stage musicals Mrs Doubtfire and Just For One Day – The Story of Live Aid. But O’Farrell, also a screenwriter for Spitting Image and Have I Got News For You, is at his best when writing about politics.
The story takes place in Hastings. The setting is not insignificant: as our narrator Emma notes early on, it is hard to think of the coastal Sussex town without having the word “battle” also in mind. The central conflict in Family Politics might not have quite the same scale of casualties as the one in 1066, but for Emma and Eddie, it doesn’t feel far off.
Perhaps they could have dealt with it better had Dylan’s admission not come at the worst possible time. With the local aged Conservative MP in a coma (which Emma reports doesn’t “adversely affect the amount of work he did for the local area”), a by-election is triggered, giving Eddie a chance to launch his bid as the Labour candidate. It doesn’t matter how much canvassing Emma does, the optics aren’t great: how can the town be expected to get behind Eddie if he can’t even get the support of his own son?
This is a story about the deep divisions in our country, fault lines that aren’t simply geographical but run through families, friends, neighbours. It is about what happens when the political becomes very personal, and causes relationships to break down in the process. But if this sounds heavy, O’Farrell’s knack for comic writing makes it far from so.
Some of the best lines are the most on the nose, such as when Emma, wondering why Dylan has become a Tory, pictures him being brainwashed by a right-wing cult, “circling their Range Rovers around a bonfire of Alastair Campbell’s diaries”. Or how she notes there should be “Culture War memorials on every English village green, solemn lists of the families ripped apart by identity politics and cancel culture underneath a big statue of people pulling down a statue”.
Despite O’Farrell’s well-known left-wing persuasion, the story also has enough balance for it not to feel as though there is an agenda at play. In fact, Emma and Eddie come across less favourably than their son. While they are somewhat hysterical in their views, Dylan is measured and thoughtful and certainly nowhere near as evil as his parents seem to imagine all Conservatives to be.
And herein lies the central message of the book: the importance of seeing one another as human, and the importance of being able to have mature, healthy conversations with people who disagree with you. Put simply, this very funny take on our very divided times is precisely the novel we all ought to read in an election year.