Why Trudy Harrison's Victory In Copeland Is A Win For Traditional English Values

'How mad I am, sad I am, glad that you won.'

I can't get these famous words by John Betjeman out of my head this morning.

'With carefullest carelessness, gaily you won,
 I am weak from your loveliness, Joan Hunter Dunn.' 

Nor can some in the Conservative Party, judging by the jubilant tweets since Trudy Harrison became Copeland's first Conservative MP since 1935 – the first time a ruling party has won a by-election since 1982.

We don't know much about Trudy Harrison, as Paul Goodman has pointed out at Conservative Home.

But one thing we do know is that she likes taking tea – in tea rooms. And she also likes a bit of spice in her life.

'My favourite place in the world to eat is the Byre Tea Rooms in Bootle, nutritious and very delicious but if we are looking for something in the evening I would really be torn between Da Vinci's or something a bit hot from Curry Spice,' she said in a recent Q&A. 

Tea. Tea rooms. Vicarages. Dappled evening sunlight in the summer dusk. But also a love for the spice of life. 

This is not just Betjeman. It is also Rupert Brooke:

'The lies, and truths, and pain? . . . oh! yet
Stands the Church clock at ten to three?
And is there honey still for tea?'

The lies, the truth, the pain of Brexit and its opponents. Of what is happening in America. Of the terrors in the Middle East.

And now we have Trudy Harrison – seeming so much in the mould of the prime minister, Theresa May. Can we dare to hope that these women represent some kind of hope for the future for our troubled and frightened country?

Theresa May is the Tories' not so secret weapon. But perhaps the faith aspect of her success seems something of a secret, because she is so private about it. So very British. 

While we know May goes to church on Sundays, we know very little about exactly how she believes, or why. Many of us, including myself, have faith embedded in the depths of our souls that is born of terrible trauma.

We are those who have tried life without God, and life with God, and know which we prefer.

In an era when so much personal tragedy is played out in public, Theresa May epitomises an old-fashioned Anglican faith that has no fear of the public devotion – the Sunday churchgoing. But the what and why of the private side of that faith is, rightly, kept private.

In this as in so much else, she is exemplary. As our world trembles around us, with old familiar certainties seeming to disappear perhaps forever, it is so comforting to know there are women such as Trudy Harrison and Theresa May, giving their all to community service and taking tea in Bootle. 

UKIP has successfully exploited for years this fear of a disappearing English style of life.

Could it be that Theresa May, and now Trudy Harrison, have pulled that rug out from under them?

These dignified Conservative women have no need to reduce the argument to a home-grown form of terror of some nameless wolf in the forest. Instead, they show simply by being who they are that this life has not gone.

Traditional Englishness, with its inherent traditions of goodness, faith, service – and tea – endures still, even in regions so much on the edge such as Copeland.  

For too long, we have been living with male politicians bigging up the fear of our beloved style of life, so English, so Betjeman, so Rupert Brooke, disappearing from Britain.

Well of course it has to change. It is changing. But we can perhaps dare to start to hope that while changing, it need not vanish entirely. 

In Theresa May, in Trudy Harrison, we can trust in a future where good things can continue to happen. A future where it is possible to welcome the stranger to our land. To work with people of other faiths and no faith in voluntary service to build social capital. We know this is possible, because these women are doing it – and against the odds, they are winning.

It's not all sunlight and roses of course.

There's still Hillaire Belloc:

'And always keep ahold of nurse – For fear of finding something worse.'

The Church of England might no longer be the Conservative Party at prayer. But these victorious Conservative women are surely the answer to the prayers of the nation. They are like the Queen. They're even a bit like Joan of Arc – like Joan Hunter Dunn. We need to treasure them and vote for them when we have the chance.

The alternatives are so very, very much worse.