Hysteria over a Sycamore Tree

We are all conservatives now.

“It was just a tree,” Adam Carruthers said when voicing his amazement in court that the Sycamore Gap crime had drawn so much media attention.

Both he and his accomplice Daniel Graham were found guilty of criminal damage in felling the tree and are now facing up to ten years in prison. They cut down the tree when Storm Agnes hit in late September 2023.

The Times on Saturday explains “in the late 19th century, a landowner planted a sycamore tree in a gentle dip between two hillocks. John Clayton, a lawyer by trade, had bought up about 20 miles of Hadrian’s Wall in an effort to prevent the destruction of what was once the frontier of the Roman Empire.

Over the following 150 years, the ruin would become a world heritage site under the protection of Northumberland national park, while the tree flourished by its side. It attained worldwide fame after featuring in the film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves in 1991, a celebrity cemented in the era of the smartphone thanks to its photogenic setting.

By September 2023 the sycamore’s roots had grown deep in the public’s imagination, yet it took only three minutes on a stormy night for it to come toppling down.”

Carruthers is correct; it was just a tree. And not even an oak tree either. Yet the destruction of the sycamore sparked outrage not only in Britain where they can get funny over things like this – the pointless cutting down of trees or skipping queues – but across the world.

Don’t get me wrong. I understand the outrage. For I am a conservative. Therefore I understand the blind rage you feel when something that has been built or grown for over 150 years is destroyed by some moron in 3 minutes. Conservatives experience a Sycamore Gap tree moment at least once every single day.