Cabinet Reshuffle: News In Briefs

Lynne Featherstone - It emerged late in the day that Featherstone is leaving her post, Home Office (Equalities) Minister, as Equalities is being moved to the Department for Culture (See Maria Miller below). A good friend to The Gays - unacknowledged architect of getting marriage equality on the agenda. And thus predictably hated by the Daily Mail and the Tory Right.

Chris Grayling - Justice Secretary. Supports hoteliers right to be homophobic. Votes "moderately against gay rights". Irony! Hardline right-winger. Replaces the liberal pro-gay Tory, Ken Clarke, who was attacked by the tabloids for being "soft on crime". Be afraid.

Nick Herbert. Tweeted he was resigning as Policing Minister late this afternoon. It's thought in a queeny flounce at not being promoted.

David Laws - Education Minister. Went to private school, natch. Return of the unconvicted fraudster. Background in business, which shows how the Tories see our schools. Only a slight return - he's an Education Minister, and hasn't returned to Cabinet - notorious heterosexual Michael Gove remains Secretary of State for Education.

Maria Miller - Culture Secretary and Minister for Women and Equalities. As Equalities - bafflingly - moves over to her new department, Culture, she takes over the equalities brief from Lynne Featherstone. I'm not sure where all these shenanigans leave Theresa May. According to a tweet earlier from Coalition 4 Equal Marriage, Miller has not told them whether she supports gay marriage. Votes "moderately against gay rights" (Has only been able to vote on two gay bills, but absent for one, against another). Gay marriage looks ever further off now.

Lady Warsi - Minister for Faith And Communities. Homophobe. Irony! Demoted from party "chairman" [sic]. Knows a lot about faith and communities as when standing for election in 2005 published a special leaflet for Muslim areas full of homophobic lies about Labour [sick]. Unelected. Appointment by tokenism.

[This was updated through the day, so ended up a bit garbled - not helped by different uses of the word "Cabinet". Hopefully it makes sense now]

PS In general, Cameron's reshuffle has been seen as a lurch to the right.  Oh crap...

Nick Herbert: Posh Gay Tory Supports Gay Marriage Shock

The Independent.
Does anyone know of any gay man who's animated by gay marriage that didn't go to public school?
Just askin'.

Ed Balls: My Funny Uncle

Ed Balls has made an Out4Marriage video - saying he wishes his late gay uncle had been allowed to marry his partner.
Credit where credit's due these videos are getting a lot of positive coverage in the straight press - even in the gay marriage-bashing Daily Telegraph.
The politicos, that is, let's not go overboard, here.
Elsewhere Nick Herbert, out Tory minister for paperclips police reform, has told the Standard he believes marriage equality is still a priority for the government.
“It has been suggested that this issue is not a priority. Of course, dealing with the economy and the deficit and restoring growth is the overriding mission and priority of this government. But since when was equality not a priority?
“Ensuring that people are treated equally without fear of discrimination should always be a priority. That’s why I think this proposal matters.
“I think the Conservative Party has changed dramatically over the course of the last few years. We now have more ‘out’ gay Members of Parliament [12] than the rest of the parties put together...
"I will forever be grateful to the MPs who had the courage to introduce civil partnerships.
“But I am getting rather fed up with people metaphorically jabbing a finger into my chest and saying I should put up with a civil partnership.
“How would they like it if I jabbed a finger into their chests and said they should put up with a civil partnership instead of their marriage? In my view it’s not acceptable to say to a group in society, ‘You should put up with something that is a second order institution to something that everybody else is entitled to, because we say so’. I think this is about nothing more or less than a fundamental issue of equality.”
And remember, MPs never-ever break their promises, or say one thing then do another.

PS And here's The Economist - a right-wing magazine that supports gay marriage - on David Cameron's problems bringing it in. 

'The issue of gay marriage has not only crystallised concerns about Mr Cameron’s firmness as a leader. It has also revived criticism of his broad strategy. Critics wonder whether he ever really understood why the Tories were so unpopular. Ordinary voters in swing seats such as Bolton West and Birmingham Edgbaston did not object to the party’s cultural views—or its indifference to greenery, its authoritarianism, or many of the other things Mr Cameron sought to change. Rather, they doubted the Tories were on the side of working people when it came to bread-and-butter issues such as living standards and public services. In Tory focus groups, members of the public are asked to draw an image they associate with the party. The most common picture is of a rich family posing in front of a big house. Gay marriage will be one of Mr Cameron’s nobler reforms. It will not solve his party’s image problem.'

Tory Conference Pride: The Times They Are A'Cliche

What a transformation. Big, light conference room in classy hotel. Signs all over the hotel pointing Conservative conference representatives the way. Good wine and canapés. Room packed, plenty of MPs, standing room only. Bright, confident, cheerful Tory delegates, half of them surely under 30. And I one of the warm-up acts to a government minister on his way to address us.
This, in October 2010, was the fringe meeting organised by Stonewall and LGB Tory — the party’s gay and lesbian organisation, of whose predecessor group I was, as an MP, a parliamentary vice-president. That early 1980s past now seems another country. Dingy basement rooms in cheap hotels, no explicit signs because the hotel didn’t want them pinned up. Nothing in the conference brochure because the party wouldn’t have it. Bad white wine, crisps and perhaps a couple of dozen furtive attenders, looking embarrassed. And I and my fellow committee officers desperately hoping that at least a couple of other MPs might turn up. Here I would make my usual speech about the march of progress being in one direction only — and struggle to believe it.
This week, the impressive Nick Herbert, our ministerial speaker, used that same phrase about the one-way march. But this time we believed it. As he was announced — Minister of State for Police and Justice — there can have been only a handful in the room, the oldest, who felt that old, instinctive tingle of anxiety down the spine at the word “police”.

Matthew Parris, The Times, 'For Gays The Past Really Was Another World'.
Presumably it read "Another Country" til a sub fucked it over.
No mention of Adam Rickitt, neither [Insert sad face].

The Independent: 'A Government of straight, white, privately educated men'

'Sean O'Grady finds an absence of diversity in the 119 people now running the country.'
"Overall, two-thirds of ministers were educated partly or entirely outside the mainstream state school system, and one in five went to one of the old established top public schools.
"Also, in stark contrast to the reality of life outside Westminster and Whitehall, there are no black members of the British government, and only three Asians and two openly gay men..."
The Independent doesn't name them, but presume they mean Alan Duncan and Nick Herbert, both Conservatives (pictured above centre and left with some bloke from Anglian Water).
There are no out gay LIberal Democrats in the cabinet, although David Laws was conceivably out for a millisecond between being outed by The Daily Telegraph and resigning as Chief Secretary to the Treasury.