I wasn’t going to get into this business about Senator Lambie but this story has another dimension which is also about the nature of journalism. It does seem from the way this tale unfolds that reporters who start from the left side are different from the journalists on the right, or at least this seems to be true about the female side.

As is well known by now, our new Senator Lambie has struck a new low in public discourse with her on-air search for some male to bed down with, as discussed here. Speaking for myself, she has lowered the tone of public discourse in Australia. She would only be of interest to a radio audience because she is a Senator, and it is, of course, interesting to find out how her mind works. But it does make trying to find a way through our many social and economic problems more difficult when someone like this has so much political power.

Yet this now seems to be the level of public debate which I am not going to do anything myself to elevate, and indeed, am going to further contribute to its descent. The Spectator in the UK has published an article by a well known lefty – at least well known to them – which is possibly of some interest although I cannot think of much actual social value in what he says. It is mostly prurience that leads me this way. The title, of course, gives away the nature of its content, My secret lust for right-wing women. This will give an idea of what the article is about:

Women of the right will not tolerate sexism; but nor do they have that tendency of some left-wing women always to play the victim of sexism. They have a robust, get-on-with-it attitude to life that makes them less prone to the neurotic, whiney, oh-poor-me melodrama that has infected so much thinking of left-leaning feminists. . . .

I have slept with women who write for the New Statesman and women who write for the Daily Telegraph and I can’t honestly claim that one lot is better than the other. But there are certain post-coital benefits that come with women of the right. They never subject a man to the music of Nick Drake or Nina Simone. As good libertarians, they don’t mind if you smoke in bed or pick up a newspaper or roll over and go to sleep — come to think of it, that’s what they are more likely to do. Nor do you ever have to lie in bed and watch some mawkish film about Nelson Mandela or one made by Michael Moore. (They don’t think you’re demented because you’d rather watch Die Hard.) And right-wing women never think that leaving the toilet seat up is a passive-aggressive act of patriarchy.

Sorry, comrades, but when it comes to the bedroom I’ll have to vote Tory.

People of opposite political views don’t really get on, not if politics is important in their lives. I think he is a man who has changed his side but is at an age where it is much too late to change his friends.