David Cameron: Why He Said I Do

As the standard bearer for a new law on gay marriage, Cameron found himself alienating many traditional Tory activists and MPs. Even his own mother found it hard to defend his stance.

Mary Cameron, a magistrate, was asked at a lunch about the negative reaction among party supporters. Reportedly, she said: ‘I know, but David just won’t be told.’

In the run-up to the vote on gay marriage, many Tory MPs who didn’t personally feel strongly about the issue faced a furious backlash in their constituencies.
 
There was much resentment about a policy that was neither in the Conservative manifesto nor the coalition agreement. Threats to resign became commonplace.

‘Pretty much the universal advice of any colleague who spoke to [Cameron] on the subject was to drop it, whatever their personal view,’ says Graham Brady, chairman of the 1922 Committee.

Cameron, he believes, didn’t grasp the implications for the party — particularly MPs with marginal seats. ‘A lot of colleagues were being driven to despair by the loss of support,’ he says. ‘There were people with small majorities, who were losing all of their activists.’

Indeed, Brady believes the Prime Minister risked being toppled over the issue. There was a ‘real danger point’ ahead of the crunch vote, he says, when many MPs were coming under unbearable pressure from their local associations to take a stand.

As it was, fewer than half of Tory MPs voted in favour in February 2013, though other parties carried the day for the PM.

‘I really believe that had he known the scale of the aggro, he wouldn’t have done it,’ says former Defence Minister Nicholas Soames, who is nonetheless ‘utterly convinced’ it was the right thing to do.

Cameron’s determination to push through such progressive legislation is curious, given his reluctance to be the figurehead for other radical change. And his views on homosexuality haven’t always been especially liberal. An acquaintance who knew him in his late 20s recalls him being ‘surprisingly squeamish about homosexuality for someone of his age’.

As an MP, Cameron attacked Tony Blair for ‘moving heaven and earth to allow the promotion of homosexuality in our schools’, and twice voted for amendments that would have excluded adoption by gay couples.

So why was he so keen on gay marriage?

On a political level, the PM and his aides believed that it would reinforce the party leader’s credentials as a ‘modern, compassionate Conservative’...

The latest instalment in the Daily Mail's SENSATIONAL SERIALISATION of Lord Ashcroft's 'a lover spurned' bitchfest', Call Me Dave.

Presumably this is meant to be a negative story.

It also rather misses the point.

What actually happened was Cameron had to withdraw a chunk of his 2011 Conservative party speech at the last minute as it was leaked and thought 'hideously patronising'.

In a panic, his newly appointed speechwriter, Julian Glover (Matthew Parris's boyfriend btw) told him to say something about gay marriage, to undercut his Equalities Minister Lynne Featherstone backing same-sex marriage at the Lib Dems conference.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you got gay marriage - basically.

It was completely cynical.

The dirty posh Tory pigfucker.

NB Call Me Dave is published by Biteback, fiefdom of top gay Tory Iain Dale. Hmm...

Gay Marriage: Wha'ppen?

Opponents of gay marriage were privately branded ‘Neanderthals’ by David Cameron, his biographer has revealed.

The Prime Minister defied opposition from his own advisers and hostility from the party to push through same sex marriage in 2013.

In ‘Cameron at 10’, Sir Anthony Seldon described the atmosphere at the 2011 Tory conference when Mr Cameron made the surprise announcement that he was consulting on legalising same sex marriage: ‘A bomb detonates in the party’, the academic wrote.

Few issues were as divisive in the party, Mr Seldon wrote, with some seeing it as ‘authentic Cameron’ pursuing his ideals while others thought it was a ‘self-inflicted wound’.

He had toyed with including it in the 2010 Tory manifesto but was over-ruled by his press adviser, Andy Coulson, the former News of the World editor who was later jailed over the hacking scandal.

His advisers repeatedly told him: ‘what’s the point if it’s going to p*** off a lot of people and not win us any votes?’

But Mr Cameron said: ‘Unless you are making some Neanderthal judgement on gays, those who are gay should have the same rights as those who are not.’

Although he personally supported the policy, his election guru Lynton Crosby warned it could be a distraction. ‘You’re f***ing off the party big time.’ ...

Daily Mail.

Actually what happened was Cameron had to withdraw a chunk of his 2011 Conservative party speech as it was leaked and thought 'hideously patronising'.

In a panic, his newly anointed speechwriter, Julian Glover (Matthew Parris's boyfriend btw) told him to say something about gay marriage, to undercut his Equalities Minister Lynne Featherstone backing same-sex marriage at the Lib Dems conference.

And that, boys and girls, is how you got gay marriage, basically.

It was completely cynical.

David Cameron: I've Been Waiting For You

“There will be young boys in schools today who are gay, who are worried about being bullied, who are worried about what society thinks of them, who can see that the highest Parliament in the land has said that their love is worth the same as anyone else’s love and that we believe in equality. And I think they’ll stand that bit taller today and I’m proud of the fact that has happened."

David Cameron, Today programme, May 22nd, 2013.

Almost hate to say it, but this did move me this morning.
Really.
But that's having speechwriters like Julian Glover feeding your lines to you.
You've come a long way, dude.
Wished you could have been there when it mattered. 

"The Blair government continues to be obsessed with their fringe agenda, including deeply unpopular moves like repealing Section 28 and allowing the promotion of homosexuality in schools".

David Cameron, electioneering in 2000.

Back to the class war...

Marriage: A Modest Proposal

"Here’s my answer: my submission to the commission on “gay marriage” that the Prime Minister has promised. Do as they’ve done in South Africa. Make the partnership that two people of either sex may enter the same in law, regardless of their sex.
"Then remove the word “marriage” altogether from legal language. Amend the statute book. Call it (say) “civil union” (as they do in South Africa). Call the ceremony bilateral amatory pledge trothing, or pledging, or registering or declaring — take your pick. Call the union itself what you like: and make this the word that the State uses for the institution that it defines, polices and protects.
"But then let every church, mosque or synagogue use the word “marriage” as their own faith enjoins, using it differently, as they already do. And let couples with civil unions call their unions whatever they wish: marriage, partnership, union, whatever. Language will sort itself out. Language always does..."

Matthew Parris, The Times.
Mr Parris is civilly partnered to James Glover, David Cameron's speech writer.
Although he didn't officially get the job until the following month, I suspect it was Glover who put in the section about gay marriage being a Conservative value into David Cameron's leadership speech to Conservative party conference.
And perhaps it was only added during the last-minute rewrite when Team Cameron removed a highly patronising section telling people to pay off their credit card bills.

Update: The Christian Institute are extremely happy that another gayer and intellectual heavyweight of the right, Christopher Biggins, has been on Loose Women and said he doesn't want gay marriage. Read their report and watch the clip here.
Mr Biggins is also in a civil partnership.
Silly old queen... 

Julian Glover: There's No Place Like Home

"We'll miss the super smart @julian_glover heading off to be cameron's speech writer. Ed Mili better get himself a good one too."

Ian Katz, deputy editor of The Guardian - via Twitter.

Glover was (one of) The Guardian's main leader writers - he's Matthew Parris's civil partner, too, incidentally.
Hardly surprising to people who've read stuff with his by-line that he's off to write speeches for David Cameron.
I know The Guardian is "a broad church" but it's always baffled me why this Tory was given such a loud voice on the paper.
He's written a handful of pieces for The Guardian on "gay stuff" - his prerogative, of course.
People should write about what they want - and there's no reason why a journalist who's gay should write about homosexuality if his interests and talents are in other areas.
It's just that he only ever seems to have one argument; that the political battle for gay rights has been won.
He's like a gay Jehovah's Witness, endlessly revising the End Time.
Here's one from last year called 'This is the moment to pack away the diamante wands'
Oh dear...

• Sorry about the image - best there is out there...

Conservatives: The Party's Over

Looks like David Cameron's latest PR stunt worked a treat.
Apparently, all the Conservative Party had to do to prove their pro-gay credentials beyond all reasonable doubt is host a garden party at 10 Downing Street, or so The Guardian's Julian Glover seems to believe.
Makes one wonder why the British state bothered commissioning The Saville Inquiry, when 40 years of "The Troubles" in Northern Ireland could be erased with a nice, little village fete on the Falls Road.
So let's raise our glasses, for Julian Glover has declared our struggle now is over; "So thanks for the white wine, prime minister, but it's time we were moving on."
Isn't it funny how people who never raised their voices are now telling us it's time to shut up?

David Laws: Behind You

Several sympathetic articles on David Laws appeared today; Chris Bryant and Julian Glover in The Guardian, Iain Dale in The Daily Mail, and a rather moving piece by Matthew Parris in The Times (there was also a rather sniffy piece by The Independent's snooty house-fag, Philip Hensher).
All argue that it was his closetry that got him into this pickle.
I'm increasingly sympathetic to this point of view, and am willing to believe that this could just have been one of those fuck-ups that we all occasionally make that then spirals completely out of control.
Poor sod.

PS It's also worth noting how these days even The Daily Mail and The Times can call on regular contributors to write about a subject like this who are out gay men...