Harry Potter, Tory

I heartily recommend you read Ben Judah’s explication at The American Interest of how Harry Potter is a Tory:

To me, perhaps the most blatantly Tory strain running through the Potterverse is the portrayal of Wizarding Whitehall. Nothing good can ever come of the Ministry of Magic, whose bureaucrats are badgering nincompoops with names like Cornelius Fudge and Pius Thicknesse, men who talk down to the befuddled Muggle Prime Minister, informing him how things are really run through a portrait and a fireplace in Number 10 Downing Street, like a voice of a Regency Palace emissary.

Not only are bureaucrats goofy and gluttonous, but every intervention by the Department of Mysteries and the Department for Magical Accidents and Catastrophes makes things worse. Problems, in Harry Potter’s world, can only be solved by the Wizards themselves—by the Tory Big Society of chipper public spirited Wizards. All that can be hoped for, even under Minister For Magic Hermione in J.K Rowling’s latest 2016 theatre spinoff Harry Potter And The Cursed Child is for government to be less corrupt. Magic will never come to the masses.

When I started reading Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone I was immediately struck by how much the book was Tom Brown’s School Days with magic and flying brooms, Hogwarts standing in for Rugby and quidditch for cricket. I haven’t read any English commentaries on the books but I suspect that they struck Brits as much nostalgic as magical.

Read the whole thing.

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