Are Tories rats?

A member of the audience on Question Time last night was wearing a t-shirt with the slogan: "You are never more than 10 feet from a Tory" with a large picture of a rat.

Now, I am all for free speech, but this seems to me cheap, wrong-headed and offensive.

No doubt there are mean, nasty, greedy, treacherous people in all political parties.

It is quite wrong to assume that all Tories are rats.

Some might say it's unfair to rats!

But surely one might be a conservative because one thought that smaller government or lower taxation or individual opportunity or conservation of the good were core principles of freedom or the flourishing of society more represented by the centre-right than the Left.

To mix metaphors, it is just wrong to think that all Tory votes are the deliberate promotion of selfish fat cats.

And these days, of course, one might find it hard to find a Tory, say in London.