In 1996 the whole of luvviedom embraced Tony Blair, 1997 saw the whole Cool Britainnia thing sweep up celebrities into the embrace of New Labour. So it is interesting to see that Stephen Fry, the luvvie’s luvvie, is giving Tory house journal The Spectator’s Annual Lecture. “So what?” you might say, he has after all a book to promote, except that is not all to suggest a blue slip is showing.

Yesterday Fry, who is a tech-blogging, Twittering über-geek with a huge 82,115 following his prognostications on life and technology, gave his considered support to the Tory policy announced by George Osborne yesterday to adopt a more effective open IT procurement process and shifting towards open source solutions.

Fry said yesterday

“Lo, our sheep that was lost is now found’. This is good news. Aside from anything else the money that could be saved in government: schools, hospitals, civil service, defence, by choosing open source and free operating systems and software. It’s wave that’s rolling over Europe and America and it’s only right that we in Britain should ride that wave too. I think politicians from all sides should endorse the aim for public systems to be run on free open source software.”