Rod Liddle: Blunt, And To The Point

A year or so back my friend and colleague Hugo Rifkind wrote a very good piece in which he argued that the issues concerning gay rights should not be resolved simply by an elongated ‘eeeeuw’. In other words, heterosexual distaste at the practices of homosexuals should not determine general policy towards this minority. A good point and well made and I agreed with much of it. But it shouldn’t stop the rest of us going ‘eeeeuw’ from time to time, nonetheless.

So, Crispin Blunt MP feels hurt because laws proscribing amyl nitrate (or ‘poppers’) would criminalise the entire gay community. A jar of poppers and a tube of ‘lube’ are always found in the bedside drawer of a gay man, we are told. I would have thought that the requirement for amyl nitrate to relax the sphincter muscle and lube to accommodate entry was God’s way of telling you that what you’re about to do is unnatural and perverse. Or your body’s way of telling you – your call. So eeeeuw. Amyl nitrate is very bad for you – so ban it. Crispin and others can always use a jemmy instead.

The Specator blog - this is Mr Liddle's post in full, by the way.

Civilisation is man's triumph over nature, Rod.

Update: Government launches review of poppers law after outcry over ban, Pink News.

Crispin Blunt: The Problem

The problem with wanting politics to be more reflective of real life is that it inevitably leads to a bald, middle-aged man explaining to the House of Commons how party drugs help him to enjoy anal sex.

“I out myself as a popper user,” Crispin Blunt, the chairman of the foreign affairs select committee, declared yesterday.

Fifty years ago such a statement would have indicated an appreciation of modern philosophy. Any politician who confessed to enjoying a hit of Popper was probably referring to one of Sir Karl’s critiques of teleological historicism. Those who were into the heavy stuff would take a snifter of Bertrand Russell as well.

Today, though, poppers are a chemical product popular on the club scene that have, as Keith Vaz explained, “a beneficial ... effect in enabling anal sex”. You learn something new every day. Or I do, anyway, being very innocent. I’m with Lyn Brown, Labour’s drugs spokeswoman, who said that until she took on the brief she thought poppers were “the little things with the string that we had at parties”... 

The Times sketch.

The piece is titled 'Crispin Blunt relaxes into role of raconteur of gay lifestyle'.

Ho ho ho!

Poppers: Tee Hee Hee

Wonder how many readers know who Crispin Blunt is and what poppers are?

Blunt must have known much of the media would treat his speech like sniggering schoolboys, so for once we could say someone's been (quite) brave.

Can you think of another politician who's said; 'I take drugs and I enjoy it?'

PS And a defence of poppers on Guardian online - yet to see one article speaking out against the whole legal highs bill.

Poppers: Blunt

Conservative MP Crispin Blunt, a former prisons minister, says he is a user of the popper recreational drug and that a proposed ban on its supply would be "fantastically stupid".
 

Respect for the law among users would "go out of the window" if there was a ban, he told MPs during a debate on the government's Psychoactive Substances Bill.

BBC News.

Legalise all drugs, not just the ones that help old gay Tories get bumfucked.

Everyone should be soveriegn over their own body!

But how refreshing for a Tory politician to be candid about liking sex and drugs.

PS Will Attitude be publishing a multi-page exposé of this chemsex menace????

Crispin Blunt: Tory Bummer For Bombing Syria

The Independent.

Admittedly it would be hard to throw people off tall buildings if you've bombed a city to dust, yeah.

Or for anyone to kill anyone when they're all already dead.

And would it have been okay to bomb Crispin Blunt back when he was a closeted and vocally anti-gay MP?

Update: From Kelvin MacKenzie in Monday's Sun...

In a poll for this newspaper that will strike fear into the hearts of the vast majority of our citizens one in four Muslims aged 18-34 said they either had “some or a lot of sympathy” for the Islamist Jihadis.

How do you mean sympathy?

Sympathy for firing a machine gun at point-blank range at unarmed innocent young people on a night out enjoying a band or a bite to eat? Sympathy for people who cut off the head of an unarmed hostage and film it to show the world their barbarism? ...

Sympathy for a death cult that throws gay people off roofs? ...

Kelvin edited The Sun in the 1980s and turned it into the most viciously homophobic and, of course, racist tabloid Britain has ever seen.

PS Why that Sun poll is bollocks.

See also The Media Have Failed Us: British muslims on coverage of the Paris attacks, Guardian.

Crispin Blunt: Prehistoric

When Crispin Blunt faced an attempt to deselect him as a Tory MP by traditionalists who were appalled by his decision to come out as gay, he knew he had two options: fight or flight. The former army officer who served as Prisons Minister at the start of the coalition chose to face down the old guard in Reigate, his Surrey constituency. The codename for his campaign team was “The Meteors” because, he says: “It was the meteors that killed the dinosaurs.”

This week he won a resounding victory in a ballot of all local members and is convinced this shows that the prehistoric age is over for the Conservatives. “It was a very important moment,” he says. “A lot of gay people will have written the Tory Party off as irredeemably homophobic. Well, the Reigate membership has just selected a gay Conservative candidate by five to one.”

Although one senior figure in the association said that he had been “the author of his own misfortune” and that it had been an “error of judgment” to make a public declaration, Mr Blunt says that this attitude will soon be extinct. “It’s frankly not very compassionate or understanding. The world has moved on. British society has moved on and the Conservative party has moved on. What this process has shown is that these people are now a tiny minority.” He hopes that the ringleaders will resign. “I don’t need to clean out all the people who didn’t vote for me but it’s terribly important I can work with the constituency association.”

The MP, who comes from a military family, understands the mindset of the traditionalists. A staunch Eurosceptic, he is also a fiscal conservative who would cut the top rate of tax to 40p. He came to terms with his own sexuality only three years ago, when he was 50 and after almost 20 years of marriage.

“All I knew at age 18 was that I simply wasn’t allowed to be gay so if I felt anything in that direction it had to be suppressed. These things called girls were frightfully difficult but the alternative just wasn’t allowed. I knew I had to have a girlfriend. It was just a nightmare — oh God I’ve got to find someone to go to a ball with. Then when I finally discovered sex it was fine, that all worked so I kept going.”

As a young man, he never questioned the assumptions he had been raised with. “I felt there was something wrong with me. I wasn’t growing up in metropolitan London, I grew up in an army community. There was not an overwhelmingly social liberal atmosphere at home. It didn’t really occur to me that the reason I found girls so hard was that if actually I gave myself the freedom I much preferred boys.”

Even after he was elected to Parliament in 1997, he spoke against the equalisation of the age of consent. “I didn’t start to understand myself until I was in my 40s. I made a speech to the effect that you could choose, because I had felt I had chosen. I had suppressed my gay side because I wanted to be a politician, and my first career had been in the Army, where it was illegal. You knew what happened to people who were thought to be in gay relationships in the Army. The military police would arrive and would rip your accommodation to shreds trying to find the evidence then you could be dishonourably discharged.”

By the time of that debate in 2001, though, he was starting to question his sexuality. “I knew the truth inside, by then. I knew if I was going to buy porn what I would want to look at. I had probably known the preference at a subliminal level since I was 12 but had never been in a position to act on it. I thought the slightest giveaway by me, in terms of any sense of affection towards a man, would be fatal and would destroy everything. You have a total defence mechanism so you therefore probably become more awkward as a personality, less affectionate.”

Although in public, the MP lived what he calls a “completely straight lifestyle”, privately he started experimenting. “I began to see the odd guy in the course of my 40s, usually on overseas visits, then I did begin to actively explore that part of myself.” Things came to a head in 2010, just a few months after he had been appointed a minister by David Cameron. “I went off to Barcelona on my own for a week and got chatting to an American couple who were on their honeymoon. They had no idea who I was and they said: ‘Why don’t you just tell your wife?’ I thought: ‘Yes why not?’”

When he got home, he told Victoria. “My reaction was this huge sense of relief that it was finally out there,” he says. Although he admits it was a “difficult time” for his wife to start with, the truth has, he believes, been a liberation for them both. “One of Victoria’s complaints in the marriage was that she could never reach me inside, that there was always a protected part of me, which, of course, there was,” Mr Blunt says. “Now our relationship is actually much more relaxed . . . I’m her gay best friend. We have lovely conversations. We are open with each other, united around our children.”

Although they are separated they have still not divorced. Their two children, who were 18 and 16 at the time he came out, have also been “remarkably” understanding, he says. “They were amazingly mature about it.” A cousin, who had been at Sandhurst at the same time as Mr Blunt but had quit because he had realised that he was gay, came to visit him. “I knew there was this gay cousin who nobody wanted to talk about, it was all hushed up. He had been incredibly brave and he told me about the gay scene in London in the 1980s. In some ways I feel I missed out but he said he buried two thirds of his friends to Aids.”

Three weeks after he told the family, they put out a statement saying that the minister had separated from his wife and “decided to come to terms with his homosexuality”. “I wanted to make clear there was no blame attached to Victoria. I didn’t want to be seen in a club, or in a relationship, when no one knew — that would have been horrible.” The Prime Minister, and other Tory MPs, have been incredibly supportive, he says. “When I got back to Parliament for the first time, colleagues were coming up to me all sympathetic and saying: ‘Are you all right?’ and I found myself saying:‘Of course I’m all right, I’m ecstatic’.”

He has been on what he calls a “voyage of discovery” on the gay scene. “Yes, I’ve had boyfriends. I feel as if I’m 21, so if I came out when I was the equivalent of 18 I’m in the early stages of working out relationships. I’m having a ball. I’m finally at ease with myself and I don’t have to hide.” Some members of his local constituency association were, however, less relaxed. In September, the executive council voted not to adopt him as the Conservative candidate. He was “shocked” by the result and is convinced that he was the victim of a “homophobic” campaign against him. When, in 2002, Alan Duncan was the first Tory MP to come out , the local grandees declared that they would never support a gaycandidate in Reigate.

“There is a vindictiveness to local politics that is much worse than Westminster,” Mr Blunt says. “It is poisonous toytown and that is what I am determined to stop. When it is at its best it is fun — you go out canvassing with mates then all go for a pub lunch. But when it is going wrong it’s really hideous and personal. It’s worse because it’s voluntary — they think what they are doing is good and moral — but it’s all about positioning.

“The women’s group had also become toxic. I think there might have been a feeling among the ladies that my wife had been treated badly and revenge should be taken. Victoria went to talk to them and said we were in a good place and were still friends, but they wouldn’t really talk to me.”

The gay marriage debate exacerbated the tensions. “People were unhappy about that but it was the most ridiculous fuss. It was a pretty microscopic legal change, and suddenly all hell breaks loose.” Although he won’t describe local Tories as “swivel-eyed loons”, he does worry that associations can be dominated by reactionaries. “Most of the party has changed, but of course some of the people who are most enthusiastic to get involved are perhaps the people who have changed least . . . The officers who didn’t support me stayed silent. It was the opposition that dare not speak its name.”

He decided to challenge the executive council’s decision, appealing over their heads to the wider membership. “I love being an MP,” he says. “I didn’t want to give in.” There were 20 volunteers in his campaign team, and 300 supportive posts on his Facebook page and website. “My wife followed them touchingly closely and she rang up to say: ‘I keep waiting for you to be canonised’. They were absolutely lovely. They’re the best testimonials anyone could possibly have and they made a slam dunk case that this was not about my performance as an MP. ”

The Tory dinosaurs have, he believes, been crushed. “The Conservative Party now has more out gay MPs than all the other parties put together.

“In the space of a few years we have become a remarkably tolerant society and I think we should be proud of that. I don’t think it would be an issue to have a gay Prime Minister.”

Sunday Times.

Thought this was fascinating, because of the insight it gives to the utterly bizarre mindset of a formerly closeted top gay tory.

A gay prime minister?

Like Pitt The Younger, maybe Disraeli, Lord Rosebery, and Ted Heath?

PS Iain Dale asks in Attitude; Can You Be Gay And Be A Tory? This reads like it was written very quickly...

Crispin Blunt: Is It Because He Is Gay?

Crispin Blunt, the Tory MP and former prisons minister, has survived an attempt by worthies in his local party to get rid of him. His opponents in his wealthy Surrey constituency were able to force a ballot which, if it had gone against Mr Blunt, would have prevented him from running again as a Conservative candidate in 2015, but he won. That is not entirely surprising, when he has had public support from David Cameron and most top Tories in the Cabinet.

The executive of the Reigate and Banstead constituency association refused to endorse Blunt as their parliamentary candidate, after he had announced that he is gay. Whether that was cause and effect is fiercely disputed.

Rita Renton, who chairs the Reigate constituency association, has said that it is “absolute rubbish” to suggest that Blunt’s troubles stemmed from his sexuality.

Priscilla Rhodes, another very outspoken local party member, told the Surrey Mirror: “He has got to know the truth – it is nothing to do with him being gay, nothing to do with him being a bad MP in London. Most of the people voted against him because, locally, he doesn’t do what he should.”

The Independent.

Ms Rhodes said the above on resigning, incidentally.
"I've never been so insulted..." etc etc.

ConservativeHome came to much the same conclusion as McSmith, but still declared Blunt's reselection "A trumphant vote for tolerance."
According to The Telegraph; "A letter has now emerged that was sent by Roger Newstead, a member of the local Conservative executive, which says that Mr Blunt's decision to announce that he was gay "was the final straw" for some Tories in the constituency."
Fagburn thinks you should be sceptical when someone cries "HOMOPHOBIA!" - it ain't necessarily so - but that does appear to be a key factor here.
Though I like the idea that some local Tory "ladies" thought Blunt getting divorced was bad enough in itself.
For some amusing background on this revealing little episode from David Cameron's gay marriage-lovin' thoroughly modern Conservative Party have a look here.

Though perhaps this Mail Online reader knows THE TRUTH!!! 

"No not true...this guy is hated by everyone and they voted to get him out because he does nothing but it was going to look bad and stonewall was going to go anti homosexual in the media on the Tory party so a string from above was pulled to keep him in to continue wasting tax payers money......the story is in much more detail elsewhere on the Internet"

PS Crispin Blunt writes for Pink News; "Gay acceptance is now establishment..." Yeah, right.

Crispin Blunt: Some History

Crispin Blunt, the Conservative MP for Reigate, has been told to reapply for his parliamentary seat amid claims that local Tories want to oust him because he came out as a homosexual after the last election.

The former prisons minister has said he will “fight on” after the executive of his local Tory association told him that he would not be automatically selected as the Surrey constituency’s candidate for the 2015 election. He has held the safe Conservative seat since 1997.

Mr Blunt made headlines just months after the 2010 election when he announced that he had separated from his wife so that he could “come to terms with his homosexuality”.

Conservative sources on Thursday night said that his relationships with some local Tories were left “beyond repair” following the disclosures about his sexuality.

“Some people became reconciled to it and were understanding,” a source said. “But some people were not and were unhappy.”

Dr Ben Mearns, a former Tory councillor in Reigate, said: “The reason I believe the association would not reselect him was based on his sexuality.

“That is my clear view. Some members of the association have overtly made comments and some implied that they did not want a gay MP.” Dr Mearns said that making the decision on the basis of sexuality was “unacceptable”...

Daily Telegraph - who probably approve.

Oh dear, this doesn't sound like David Cameron's thoroughly modern gaymarrying Conservative Party, does it?

Though it could also be because some local activists just think Blunt's a lousy constituency MP.
This all has some history.

The Telegraph reported in August 2010; Senior Conservatives in Crispin Blunt's constituency turned on the Tory prisons minister yesterday after he left his wife and declared he was homosexual.

"Tony Collinson, the former association chairman, who was on the selection panel when Mr Blunt was first chosen for the seat in 1997, said he would never have been picked if the truth had been known at the time.
"One of the reasons [he was selected] was because he had a nice, compact, family unit. He made quite a bit of it," said Mr Collinson, who gave up the chairmanship six years ago.
"I'm a little disappointed with the news because I don't think he would necessarily have been chosen had he come out then."
Brian Cowle, a Conservative councillor in Reigate and Banstead borough, added: "It is one of those things which we would have liked to be known before the general election, that it's been a problem for all this time. 
"We all have problems and nuances in our lives; we don't go splashing it over the papers. It could add to a slight discomfort about things."

Though this time the problem may lie higher up.

Only yesterday the Telegraph reported on rumours Blunt was being removed so his safe Tory seat could be given to Boris Johnson.
Hmm...

And lest we forget...

Anthony Blunt - no relation - largin' it at the Hacienda

"I believe it right that our law should discriminate in that limited way between homosexual and heterosexual practice. While I accept that, in law, we should tolerate people's choices to follow a homosexual life style and practice, I maintain that those are not equivalent to heterosexuality - nor should we pretend that they are. It is also clear that there a much greater strand of homosexuality than of heterosexuality which depends for its gratification on the exploitation of youth.
"I am sorry if Labour members do not like the truth, but I do not intend to run away from difficult issues."

Crispin Blunt MP speaking in parliament as a presumed heterosexual in 1998.
Oops!
Perhaps then, Mr Blunt would have backed deselecting an MP who'd come out?
Gay Tories, dontcha just love 'em?

Crispin Blunt: A Powerful And Moving Coming Out Story I'm Sure We Can All Relate To

After he was elected to parliament in 1997, Blunt took interest in a bill on lowering the gay age of consent from age 18 to 16 — the same as the legal age of consent for heterosexuals in the U.K.
Opposing the law, which ultimately passed in 2000, he said during debate, “It is also clear that there is a much greater strand of homosexuality than of heterosexuality which depends for its gratification on the exploitation of youth.” That charge was met with jeers. In particular, Blunt was dressed down by the Labour Party’s Ben Bradshaw, one of the first openly gay MPs in the country, who intervened and said, “You can’t choose your sexuality.”
“From that moment, the penny started to drop with me,” Blunt now says. “The edifice I had created around myself over the past 30 years, from the age of 13 onwards, began to crack. It was no longer illegal [to be gay] in my previous profession, the military. It was no longer impossible to pursue a political career if you were out. It was from that debate that I had begun to reevaluate myself. What I said in 1998 was based around the level of control I suppose I created around myself.”

Crispin Blunt, Conservative Prisons Minister, in his first homo interview since he came out, almost exactly a year ago.
But why is he giving it to the US magazine, Advocate online?
Maybe no-one over here bothered to ask?
Fagburn's favourite line? "I’ve ridden on the back of other people who have fought, and I’m extremely conscious of that."
Ahem.

Fagburn: Last Week's So-Called News Today!

Before we get back to normal, there are a few very brief points Fagburn would like to make about the news from the week that passed us by due to ill-health.
You know, just for the record and that.

That William Hague Thing:
Funniest well of ink spilled on this one?
The Daily Mail's pet poove Andrew Pierce with his "Soulmates who were such easy targets for innuendo".
[Brief pause while Fagburn makes his sad boo-hoo face].
Seeing as this non-scandal seemed to centre on those hilariously Hello! magazine-style photos of Mr Hague and Mr Myers (above, obviously), well done to Mildred Mr Pierce for writing such a gushing Hello! style tribute to the lovely couple.*
Maybe it was a fit of guilt on the part of The Mail?
Lest we forget - and it usually is - the whispering campaign against William Hague and Christopher Myers first went public not on Guido Fawkes blog.
Guido Fawkes first mentioned Hague and Myers after their relationship had been broached by the Daily Mail on August 21st:
'Another Hague Special Adviser: And another of those baseball cap moments'.
For reasons best known to the Mail they accompanied the news article with not one, not two, but three photos from the paparazzi session above.
Then followed it up with a catty comment piece (plus photo of the two men) two days later.
See if you can detect any innuendo in that one.

Crispin Blunt MP:
You remember? He's the Conservative Prisons Minister who came out 10 days ago AS A BIG GAY!!!
Don't worry if you don't really remember.
In a handy piece of serendipity, everyone had forgotten all about it as soon as the Hague tsunami of tittle-tattle broke a few days later.
No homo story has emerged on Mr Blunt in the newspapers, but Fagburn was rather concerned at the temper and tone of The Daily Mail's earlier attacks on Blunt's "liberal" views on prisons and criminal justice.
This is the Mail's leader from July 22nd, 'An Insult Too Far'.
"The Tories have already given up on a long list of their manifesto commitments. But to renounce their historic role as the party of law and order may be an insult too far for many of their loyal supporters."
Many media mentioned the "prison parties" as Blunt's previous claim to ministerial fame before his coming out.
Is Fagburn alone in wondering if they might be related?

Gareth Williams Murder:
The Daily Mail's ever-madder Melanie Phillips has stuck her oar in.
The headline to her article asks; 'The dead MI6 spy was an unsung hero, so why are shadowy figures trying to blacken his name?'
After wibbling on for 1,000 or so meandering words, Phillips concludes brilliantly; "Perhaps. Who knows?"
Case closed!

And finally... "Morrissey Reignites Racism Row":
Her and her big mouth, eh?
Oops again, dear.

Right, let's get back to the present...

* William and Ffion

Quote of the Day: Crispin Blunt

"I believe it right that our law should discriminate in that limited way between homosexual and heterosexual practice. While I accept that, in law, we should tolerate people's choices to follow a homosexual life style and practice, I maintain that those are not equivalent to heterosexuality - nor should we pretend that they are. It is also clear that there a much greater strand of homosexuality than of heterosexuality which depends for its gratification on the explpoitation of youth.
"I am sorry if Labour members do not like the truth, but I do not intend to run away from difficult issues."

Crispin Blunt MP, who came out as a lesser homosexual on Friday, speaking in parliamement as a presumed heterosexual in 1998.
Oops.

Cabinet Rumour: Who's Next?

"A Cabinet minister is ready to take legal action to halt a series of increasingly lurid but baseless rumours sweeping Westminster over his sexuality, The Daily Telegraph has learnt."
Has it? Who?
No, not Crispin Blunt, he came out this afternoon.
"The minister, who is married, has been accused of having an affair with a Whitehall official and of having a long-term relationship with a journalist. He has strongly denied the allegations. Senior Downing Street aides are braced this weekend for “suggestive” reports to begin surfacing over the Cabinet minister’s private life.
"Friends of the minister have warned that he will not hesitate to take “action” should unfounded allegations that he is homosexual, which are circulating on the internet, appear in mainstream media."
Who on Jupiter can they mean?
Apropos of nothing - there's a fun new caption competition on Guido Fawkes blog today.
What larks!

Newsflash: Crispin Blunt Comes Out

"Prisons minister Crispin Blunt splits from wife and says he's gay;" The Mirror has just announced.
Don't know much about him to be honest. It's hard keeping up with this new lot.
The statement from his office reads: "Crispin Blunt wishes to make it known that he has separated from his wife Victoria.
"He decided to come to terms with his homosexuality and explained the position to his family. The consequence is this separation.
"There is no third party involvement, but this is difficult for his immediate and wider family and he hopes for understanding and support for them."
More when we get it.
There often turns out to be "more" in these sort of stories, doesn't there?
I wonder what the weekend papers hold.