The campaign is coming to an end, so it’s time to put down the pen

How do I feel? Not that any of you reading this care. I feel like a big fat turkey with its wings clipped so I can’t fly and I feel abandoned. I am aware of my fate but I can’t escape my impending fate, which is to be plucked and prepared for the upcoming Labour budget banquet; someone or something is about to enter my henhouse and take everything I have.

One of Labour’s flirtations is with a land value tax, commonly known as a ‘garden tax’. They clearly see access to or ownership of land as a privilege, and a garden as an unfair extravagance. For ten years I tended my walled garden in Devon, in a place I thought was neutral and politically free. It seems that is no longer the case. Soon, as now in Wales, drones will buzz over my dahlias instead of bees, so that property values ​​can be calculated using mathematical and statistical modelling based on inputs including plot sizes – or should I say pot sizes?

“There is no other way,” my husband tells me. “We will have to turn the garden into a field and plant potatoes instead of peonies so that we can feed the deserving masses.”

Listen, I know that “half” of the Labour Party “don’t know what a woman is”. What they really don’t know is what will happen to them if they get between an Englishwoman of a certain age and her garden spade. If they thought managing JK was a challenge, wait! The entire RHS community will soon descend on them too.

The court commune

Another fear is the mansion tax. My elderly parents live in London like a bereft Russian family from 1918, huddled around a stove in one of the few rooms allocated to them in their grand, now shared mansion. My father was a banker in the 1980s, when London became a global financial centre; he bought a house decades ago and we all crammed in. Now in his nineties, he lives like a shadow of his former self, enduring the noise and chaos of three generations of his family, who can’t afford their own mortgages. He’s trying hard to cling to the remnants of his lost status and dignity amid all the revolutionary upheavals in his home. A former politician himself, he tells me that he already gives about 70 per cent of his income to the state in some form. It doesn’t surprise him that they’ll soon pay for his house too; it’s almost all he has left.

Material classified as X

I dipped my big toe into what can only be described as a dirty X joint during the election campaign. Just one tweet, one. It was a caption for a photo with a strong Peaky Blinders vibes with a triangle of tough-looking men led by Nigel Farage. My caption was: “Whites, Men, Elections, Reform.” Half an hour later I had 80,000 views, 86 likes, and 278 retweets, which is a record for me, because I’m not very active on the platform. The reaction was like every rabid far-right dog on the web had been let loose, their furious howls echoing through the dark tunnels of social media, fueled by a terrifying, uncontrolled xenophobic fury. St. George’s flags were flying, men were calling me a racist (yes, me!), and on and on and on, all night and into the next day.

“White Boys’ Summer.”

“Let’s go, fucking hell.”

“Whites, women, ruin, everything.”

“Race traitor.”

“Tough times create strong men.”

“Great, now it’s time for Africa.”

“England for the English.”

“Fuck yes! Let’s go!”

By evening I was so bored with it that I tweeted another one to stop them: “Just signing a photo. Relax, guys! The pub’s open.”

And they came for me anyway…

“Women shouldn’t have political opinions.”

“Shut up, bitch.”

At Reform HQ their officers were clearly starting to worry about what my tweet had unleashed and asked some of the keyboard warriors to help stop it. Suddenly lots of people were writing the same thing: “That’s a cool photo, thanks for sharing.” Modern campaigns are now frighteningly full of hidden voices, like the wind, shaping the landscape without ever being seen.

One Bridgerton Too Far

As soon as the election campaign is over, I’m giving up writing political diaries. I’ve chronicled the fall, rise and fall of the Conservative Party since 1997, and it’s finally time to put down the pen. The upside?

My husband can stop calling me Lady Whistledown now.

(See also: As anti-Semitism rises, tolerance returns at unexpected moments)