JAGJEET Singh-Sohal grew up in the Labour stronghold of Birmingham Perry Bar.
At the age of 20, he informed his Labour-voting parents of his decision to join the Conservative Party before leaving to attend a party conference last year. “They asked me where I was going and I told them,” he said. “They were quite surprised. Their generation saw the Conservative Party as being quite racist. Asians absolutely loathed the poll tax and some of the Thatcherite policies.
“But here am I, a turban-wearing Sikh guy, joining the Tories. If anything, it has convinced them that the Tory party has changed. I was at a family wedding the other week and all my relatives were questioning me about how come I was a Tory.
“If anything, it is more interesting to be Tory now. I have this argument with my mother in Punjabi all the time. She says: ‘What are the Conservatives putting forward as policies?’ I say they want to cut taxes. I tell her the party she voted for has been steadily increasing her taxes.”
So far Mr Singh-Sohal, a Brunel University student, has not talked his parents round. But he has managed to convert his 13-year-old sister, who informed her parents midway through dinner one night that she had also decided to become a Tory. “My father sort of looked at me and smiled. He knew I was responsible.”
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Caroline Hunt’s mother and grandparents are Liberal supporters, as were older generations of the family. Brought up in Highgate, North London, with Labour and Liberal Democrat-voting family and friends, it was expected that she would follow that trend. “My grandmother was slightly horrified when she found out I was a Tory,” she said.
Ms Hunt, 18, decided to break the family tradition after chatting with the Tory MP John Randall. “I’m now the chair of our university Conservative Society and that really shocked my grandmother. But I think they realise that I’m serious now. I get a lot of hassle from people I went to school with in North London. My best friend’s mother tells me not to come in her house with my Tory posters.”
James Holtum’s father is a former representative for the AEEU trade union, now Amicus. James, 22, said: “My parents are a bit bewildered by the fact that I am so interested in politics at all at my age.
“But being involved in the Conservative Party at the moment is certainly interesting. It is more exciting than being in Labour because you are helping to rebuild. They say the best time to buy stock is when it is a bit low.”
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