Turing's Law: Tokenism

Few reasons to vote Labour at this election could be more tokenistic than their new pledge to introduce "Turing’s Law". This legislation, named after Bletchley Park codebreaker Alan Turing, would allow families to apply for the government to posthumously pardon gay ancestors convicted of “indecency.” It's a touching idea, and not a bad one. But you don’t have to be a genius codebreaker to see that, coming from Labour, this the worst sort of gimmickry, cynically designed to win votes on the cheap.

Elections should be about solid promises to change society today, not historical tinkering. If Labour wanted to offer current victims of injustice anything substantial, it could pledge to repeal this government's cuts to the legal aid budget. But Sadiq Khan ruled that out just this Monday. Unable to think of anything useful to promise to living members of the LBGT community, and beaten to the legalisation of gay marriage by the coalition government, Ed Miliband is – if anything – damaging an otherwise harmless idea, turning it into a precedent of which we ought to be suspicious...

Rupert Myers, Daily Telegraph.

A rare moment where Fagburn colludes with the Daily Telegraph (and someone called Rupert).*

Hurrah for pointless gestures!

* Apart from my near-namesake Rupert Smith, obvs.