Category Archives: David Cameron
Cameron’s leadership under fire: Politics live blog
Andrew Sparrow’s rolling coverage of all the day’s political developments as they happen, including David Cameron’s attempts to repair relations with his party and criticism of his leadershipAndrew Sparrow
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Gay marriage is a detox symbol for Cameron, but is it worth the trouble?
Whatever the polls say, my hunch is that more unhappiness than happiness may be created by the same-sex couples bill
A wise Labour veteran who has been close to the heart of the party’s affairs for decades derided my suggestion early on Monday that Ed Miliband would be wise to rescue David Cameron’s gay marriage bill from his own wreckers, as he did later in the day. Why? Because Labour supports the measure and to vote otherwise would be mere tactics. Impatient voters nowadays do not like mere party tactics.
“I believe the job of the opposition is to oppose. Any opportunity to humiliate Cameron’s government and help bring it down should be taken,” countered my strongly libertarian friend. Had we taken it further I might have asked him (he knows a lot about these things) how the jittery financial markets might take the collapse of the current coalition and the prospect of another one or a highly uncertain general election.
Instead we agreed that Cameron had been showing hopeless political leadership in countenancing such a divisive vote for his MPs and their activists over a measure for which there is no evidence of great demand, even among gay men, lesbians and transsexuals, according to some polls. Earlier reforms, notably civil partnerships, seem to have levelled the proverbial playing field, more or less.
Alas, the vote has acquired symbolic power for Cameron who has been trying to “detox” the Thatcher-toxified Tory party in exceptionally difficult times. He is torn between his Lib Dem coalition partners who support that project and his activist base, traditionalist and elderly, who loved Lady T and think Norman Tebbit has the answer to electoral success. He doesn’t, though in fairness he was party chairman the last time the Tories won a working majority (1987).
So gay marriage has become a detox symbol for Dave, the latest in a long line of hugged hoodies and hugged huskies, the Cameroons’ Clause IV moment when he defies his party base as Tony Blair relished doing (too much) to impress the voters. Duh? Yes. Unfortunately it has come to a head just as the fatuous Euro-battle did, allowing more ingenious critics to link the two issues: those Europeans are making us do it.
The parliamentary website has a pretty decent summary of the legislative position, including Monday’s debate. There is much sincerity to be found among partisans in both camps, one side likening the gay rights struggle to the battle to abolish slavery (still plenty to do in that campaign), the other complaining about the pushy behaviour of the “aggressive homosexual community”.
I don’t have much trouble seeing both points of view, even the notion that one or two gay rights lobbies adopt the same kind of aggressive tactics that militants do in most campaigns. Milder colleagues don’t want to be disloyal and disown them, but sometimes wish they’d shut up. That’s human nature.
The question for practical politics is what to do about it. I was lucky enough to be in New Zealand when the gay marriage row last erupted on to the front pages in January. No escape for the wicked. The same debate was going on there – later carried amid cheers and singing of Maori love songs in the Kiwi parliament – as it has been in Australia, the US and even in France where gay marriage is one of the few things the hapless presidency of François Hollande has managed to achieve.
Every country’s history and culture, secular and religious, is different. But the battle lines are similar in them all. Social conservatives, not all on the political right, say civil partnership gave gay people what they wanted at the time, so that Labour ministers who enacted the law (Patricia Scotland was quite explicit in the Lords debate) assured waverers that this would be it. No coming back for more, they said.
Of course, they always say that. They said it when Scotland got its devolved parliament (they may be right too) and when Britain voted yes to Europe by a margin of 2-1 in the 1975 referendum. Life and attitudes change. As the Guardian’s editorial remarks, UK public opinion is now supportive of the right to gay marriage – not just civil partnership, but marriage in the ancient sense of the word – “a principled happiness-creating reform”, the paper calls it.
So far so good. But public opinion can be pretty shallow, pretty volatile, often rooted in nothing deeper than whatever’s being reported in the Daily Beast this week: thin soil. That’s why polls to pick the greatest film, actor, footballer etc usually settle for a more recent choice than a great classic from the past. Ditto policy options in an age when formal ideologies of left and right are viewed with widespread suspicion – not by everyone, the jihadis are still out there – and pragmatic solutions, technocratic and evidence-based, are generally favoured.
So, whatever opinion polls tell us, my hunch is that more unhappiness than happiness may be created by the same-sex couples bill if it passes both houses. Why, when plenty welcome it as an act of belated equality while large swaths of public opinion isn’t much worried by marriage, church or civil, either way because it doesn’t bother to get married in a socially permissive era?
This is not the place to discuss the consequences of this trend, except to note there are consequences. Thus sex and gender stories dominate most of Tuesday’s home news pages in the relatively unsensational Times: pages 1, 4, 5, 7 to 9, 13 (the police raid on Nigel Evans MP’s office) and 17, a court report of a domestic murder arising from infidelity.
But other swaths of public opinion, they may even be small swaths, care a great deal. They are the grannies protesting – here and abroad – with their “Marriage = Man + Woman” placards, the clergymen, rabbis and imams who protest against what they regard as the tainting of the core institution of civil society down the ages, the family that consists of parents, children, grandchildren, aunts, cousins, pets. It is the great bastion against the intrusive power of the state or corporations.
It may be that social progress, allied with dazzling medical technology and psychological insight, is changing the family for the better into something looser, more fluid, less hierarchical, one into which the gay family can fit happily with mutual adaption on both sides. I hope so, because we’ve already got there, haven’t we? That’s the new reality in 2013, with or without the bill.
There again, great claims made for progress sometimes fall sort of their ambitions. Even Facebook is no longer looking as great a step forward as it did five years ago. Surprise! By that test the conservatives are entitled to be sceptical when asked to choose between their long-established, much-loved religious institution and what they see as transient fashion, unpleasant though some of their fulminations may be.
They’re like the countryside lobby, whose hunting faction cares more about their sport than all but the most swivel-eyed of its critics dislike it. They won’t forget in a hurry either. If Cameron is brought tumbling down over grievances like this one – along with misjudgments over Europe and all the rest – we may look back in astonishment as sterling tumbles and interest rates soar for straight and gay people alike.
In a climate of deepening social division and ungovernability, we may ask: how did we get into this mess? Did we do it for this?
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Gay marriage bill survives after Ed Miliband votes against amendment
Labour leader votes against amendment extending civil partnerships to heterosexual couples after appeal by Tory whips
The gay marriage bill has been saved after Ed Miliband agreed at the last minute to vote against an amendment to extend civil partnerships to heterosexual couples that had prompted government warnings that it would derail the entire measure.
The Labour leader, who had planned to abstain in a Commons vote on the amendment, agreed to change tack after the government chief whip Sir George Young sent a message to his opposition counterparts that the Tory leadership was facing defeat.
The move meant that the amendment, tabled by the anti-gay marriage Tory, former children’s minister Tim Loughton, was defeated by 375 to 70 votes, a majority of 305.
The decision by the Labour leadership, which has gone from supporting the amendment on civil partnerships to rejecting it within the space of 24 hours, means that the marriage (same-sex couples) bill will now experience a safer journey through parliament.
The government had warned earlier in the day that the Loughton amendment would have threatened the entire bill by adding £4bn to the costs and delaying its implementation. The costs would have come from increased pension survivor rates for new civil partners.
Labour sources said that the party, which had announced earlier in the day that it would abstain on the Loughton amendment after overnight warnings from the government about the threat to bill, denied that Miliband had embarked on a double U-turn.
One source said: “We had an eleventh hour appeal from the government that they did not have the numbers to defeat the Tim Loughton amendment. They made repeated approaches to us at ever increasing levels.
“Ed’s overriding priority is to ensure that the bill gets on to the statute book. Ed and Yvette Cooper will therefore be voting against the Tim Loughton amendment. We expect a large number of MPs to join Ed and Yvette. Since there was a genuine threat to the bill Ed decided the best thing to do was to act in this way.”
The appeal by Tory whips for Labour support to ensure the safety of the bill highlighted deep divisions in the Conservative party in the wake of claims that a senior member of his entourage described party activists as “swivel-eyed”. Lord Feldman, the Tory co-chairman, denied making the remarks.
More than 100 Tory MPs planned to register their opposition to the marriage (same-sex couples) bill by voting in favour of a series of amendments to water down the measure. In the first vote of the evening, more than 150 MPs voted in favour of an amendment that would allow registrars to refuse to perform same-sex ceremonies.
Tory opponents of the bill were alarmed when Labour and the Tories embarked on negotiations during the day. The government agreed during the day to a Labour request to amend its own plans by launching an immediate review into extending civil partnerships to heterosexual couples.
Maria Miller, the equalities minister, agreed to the Labour request. But she suggested that the review could lead to the end of civil partnerships when she said the review will see “if there is a demand for [civil partnerships]“.
The deal meant that the government amendment, altered by Labour, was approved by 391 to 57 votes, a majority of 334.
But Labour initially said that it would abstain on the Loughton amendment on the grounds that it agreed with it but did not want to risk the overall bill.
The leaders of all the main parties offered all their MPs, including ministers and shadow ministers, a free votes on the grounds that marriage is a “conscience” social issue in which the party whips have no official say. But the prime minister devoted government time to the gay marriage legislation in the belief that it would help reach out to centre ground voters who may feel uncomfortable about supporting a party whose leader voted in favour of the retention of section 28 as recently as ten years ago.
The divisions among Tories was highlighted when Sir Gerald Howarth, knighted on the advice of the prime minister last year when he sacked him as a defence minister, warned of an “aggressive homosexual community” during a clash with a member of Cameron’s policy board. Howarth made the remarks when Margot James, a fellow Tory MP who is in a civil partnership and who was recently appointed to the new Conservative policy board, said that the equal marriage legislation would level the playing field after gay people suffered discrimination in the 1980s.
Howarth replied: “I warn you, and MPs on all sides of the house, that I fear that the playing field has not been levelled. I believe that the pendulum is now swinging so far the other way and there are plenty in the aggressive homosexual community who see this as but a stepping stone to something even further.”
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David Cameron: I would never work with those who sneer at activists
Prime minister sends personal note to party members as senior figure claims he is ‘worse than John Major’
David Cameron moved to repair relations with a bruised Conservative party by emailing a “personal note” to all members in which he said he would never work with anyone who “sneered” at activists.
Amid anger in the party at the allegations that a senior member of his inner circle had referred to activists as “mad swivel-eyed loons”, the prime minister said the party was held together by “a deep and lasting friendship”.
Cameron reached out after senior Tories, who were enraged by allegations that the Tory co-chairman Lord Feldman had made disparaging remarks about Tory activists, warned of a sea change in the parliamentary party as growing numbers of MPs decide that the prime minister is becoming a liability. Feldman strenuously denied the allegations which he described as “completely untrue”.
But senior figures indicated that the chairman of the Conservative backbench 1922 committee, Graham Brady, was expected to receive further letters calling for a confidence vote. Brady, who is understood to have been sent a limited number in recent months, will have to call a vote if he receives at least 46.
One senior figure said: “This is worse than John Major. There was quite a lot of sympathy for him because of the Maastricht rebels. He also listened, though he probably listened too much. With Cameron it feels like this could be terminal – and will be so before the election.”
The prime minister moved to stabilise his position by sending an impassioned email to party members in which he wrote fondly of his 25 years as a party member.
The prime minister wrote: “We have been together through good times and bad. This is more than a working relationship; it is a deep and lasting friendship. Ours is a companionship underpinned by what we believe…Time and again, Conservative activists like you stand for duty, decency and civic pride.”
Cameron addressed criticism of his inner circle. “I am proud to lead this party. I am proud of what you do. And I would never have around me those who sneered or thought otherwise. We are a team, from the parish council to the local association to parliament, and I never forget it … To those reading this, here is my message: there will always be criticism from the sidelines. But we must remember what this party has always been about: acting in the national interest.”
Feldman fought off an attempt to hold an inquiry into his alleged comments after he won overwhelming backing at a meeting of the Conservative party board. Brian Binley, the Tory MP for Northampton South, agreed to withdraw his call for an inquiry after the leadership agreed to “close the gap between the leadership and grassroots”. Feldman categorically denies making the remarks which were reported, though not attributed to him, in the Times and the Daily Telegraph on Saturday.
Binley said he accepted the view of the board but said he was pleased that it had agreed to work hard to close the gap between the leadership and the grassroots. “The issue was fully discussed by the board and complete confidence was voiced in the chairman Andrew Feldman. I did propose an investigation into the insulting words, reported to have been used, was undertaken. But that was overwhelmingly rejected.
“However, it was agreed that there was a need to narrow the gap between the party and the country and the leadership. It was said that a programme was already in hand to set that into being.”
One member of the board said Feldman had won the day because of concerns that the Times and the Daily Telegraph had refused to name the person who allegedly made the disparaging remarks. The Tory said: “I think people don’t understand how popular Andrew Feldman is. He works really hard with the party. He is very assiduous and is greatly admired.”
Tories said the allegation that a senior Conservative had described activists as “swivel-eyed” marked a significant moment even though Feldman said it was “completely untrue” to suggest he made the remarks. The MP said: “It doesn’t matter whether he said it or not. The fact is it reinforces the view of the party leadership.”
One MP said it was difficult to see how Cameron could turn around his fortunes after a series of setbacks, not helped when he appointed two more Etonians to his inner circle. “What is Cameron going to do? Rescind the Etonian hirings, say I am not a snob? Of course not. This feels terminal. I can’t predict how it will happen but it feels like we are nearing the end.”
Tories say the atmosphere in the parliamentary party has changed over the past week after a consensus had been formed around Easter that the prime minister was secure at least until next year’s European parliamentary elections, which Ukip is expected to win. The successful budget and the prime minister’s widely praised handling of the death of Lady Thatcher prompted opponents to back down.
But senior figures are saying Cameron’s handling of the EU referendum vote, in which he conceded that a bill should be passed in this parliament after initially saying this was unnecessary, had weakened him even in the eyes of Eurosceptics. The vote on gay marriage, in which Cameron was forced to negotiate with Labour to protect a bill which is widely despised in the party, did little to help matters.
One MP said: “People felt that things were moving in the right way and we had got the initiative. But we keep mucking up. It is all mucking it up from an elitist perspective.
“Trying to be all things to all men doesn’t work. This culture of ‘we know better than you’ is unacceptable.”
Others talk of how the “tectonic plates” – the famous phrase used by John Prescott to signal the end of the Blair era – are shifting. “Certainly the tremors are reverberating,” one MP said.
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David Cameron: I would never work with those who sneer at activists
Prime minister sends personal note to party members as senior figure claims he is ‘worse than John Major’
David Cameron moved to repair relations with a bruised Conservative party by emailing a “personal note” to all members in which he said he would never work with anyone who “sneered” at activists.
Amid anger in the party at the allegations that a senior member of his inner circle had referred to activists as “mad swivel-eyed loons”, the prime minister said the party was held together by “a deep and lasting friendship”.
Cameron reached out after senior Tories, who were enraged by allegations that the Tory co-chairman Lord Feldman had made disparaging remarks about Tory activists, warned of a sea change in the parliamentary party as growing numbers of MPs decide that the prime minister is becoming a liability. Feldman strenuously denied the allegations which he described as “completely untrue”.
But senior figures indicated that the chairman of the Conservative backbench 1922 committee, Graham Brady, was expected to receive further letters calling for a confidence vote. Brady, who is understood to have been sent a limited number in recent months, will have to call a vote if he receives at least 46.
One senior figure said: “This is worse than John Major. There was quite a lot of sympathy for him because of the Maastricht rebels. He also listened, though he probably listened too much. With Cameron it feels like this could be terminal – and will be so before the election.”
The prime minister moved to stabilise his position by sending an impassioned email to party members in which he wrote fondly of his 25 years as a party member.
The prime minister wrote: “We have been together through good times and bad. This is more than a working relationship; it is a deep and lasting friendship. Ours is a companionship underpinned by what we believe…Time and again, Conservative activists like you stand for duty, decency and civic pride.”
Cameron addressed criticism of his inner circle. “I am proud to lead this party. I am proud of what you do. And I would never have around me those who sneered or thought otherwise. We are a team, from the parish council to the local association to parliament, and I never forget it … To those reading this, here is my message: there will always be criticism from the sidelines. But we must remember what this party has always been about: acting in the national interest.”
Feldman fought off an attempt to hold an inquiry into his alleged comments after he won overwhelming backing at a meeting of the Conservative party board. Brian Binley, the Tory MP for Northampton South, agreed to withdraw his call for an inquiry after the leadership agreed to “close the gap between the leadership and grassroots”. Feldman categorically denies making the remarks which were reported, though not attributed to him, in the Times and the Daily Telegraph on Saturday.
Binley said he accepted the view of the board but said he was pleased that it had agreed to work hard to close the gap between the leadership and the grassroots. “The issue was fully discussed by the board and complete confidence was voiced in the chairman Andrew Feldman. I did propose an investigation into the insulting words, reported to have been used, was undertaken. But that was overwhelmingly rejected.
“However, it was agreed that there was a need to narrow the gap between the party and the country and the leadership. It was said that a programme was already in hand to set that into being.”
One member of the board said Feldman had won the day because of concerns that the Times and the Daily Telegraph had refused to name the person who allegedly made the disparaging remarks. The Tory said: “I think people don’t understand how popular Andrew Feldman is. He works really hard with the party. He is very assiduous and is greatly admired.”
Tories said the allegation that a senior Conservative had described activists as “swivel-eyed” marked a significant moment even though Feldman said it was “completely untrue” to suggest he made the remarks. The MP said: “It doesn’t matter whether he said it or not. The fact is it reinforces the view of the party leadership.”
One MP said it was difficult to see how Cameron could turn around his fortunes after a series of setbacks, not helped when he appointed two more Etonians to his inner circle. “What is Cameron going to do? Rescind the Etonian hirings, say I am not a snob? Of course not. This feels terminal. I can’t predict how it will happen but it feels like we are nearing the end.”
Tories say the atmosphere in the parliamentary party has changed over the past week after a consensus had been formed around Easter that the prime minister was secure at least until next year’s European parliamentary elections, which Ukip is expected to win. The successful budget and the prime minister’s widely praised handling of the death of Lady Thatcher prompted opponents to back down.
But senior figures are saying Cameron’s handling of the EU referendum vote, in which he conceded that a bill should be passed in this parliament after initially saying this was unnecessary, had weakened him even in the eyes of Eurosceptics. The vote on gay marriage, in which Cameron was forced to negotiate with Labour to protect a bill which is widely despised in the party, did little to help matters.
One MP said: “People felt that things were moving in the right way and we had got the initiative. But we keep mucking up. It is all mucking it up from an elitist perspective.
“Trying to be all things to all men doesn’t work. This culture of ‘we know better than you’ is unacceptable.”
Others talk of how the “tectonic plates” – the famous phrase used by John Prescott to signal the end of the Blair era – are shifting. “Certainly the tremors are reverberating,” one MP said.
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Labour saves David Cameron’s gay marriage bill
Rebel Tories are defeated in Commons after PM’s last minute plea to Ed Miliband
The government’s gay marriage bill was saved after David Cameron was forced to rely on Ed Miliband to defeat an attempt by his own MPs to derail the measure by trying to extend civil partnerships to heterosexual couples.
An 11th-hour plea to the Labour leadership by the Tory chief whip Sir George Young, who warned that the government was in danger of losing the vote, prompted a change of heart by Miliband, who had been planning to abstain on the amendment.
The Labour move meant that the amendment, tabled by the anti-gay marriage Tory and former children’s minister Tim Loughton, was defeated by 375 to 70 votes, a majority of 305.
The decision by the Labour leadership, which has gone from supporting the amendment on civil partnerships to rejecting it within the space of 24 hours, means that the marriage (same-sex couples) bill will now experience a safer journey through parliament.
But the prime minister, who attempted to reach out to his party by emailing a “personal note” to all members saying that he would never work with anyone who “sneered” at them, suffered the humiliation of having to plead with the Labour party for support. He also saw more than 100 Tory MPs, including the cabinet ministers Iain Duncan Smith and Owen Paterson, vote against him on the first amendment of the day.
The prime minister will understand the dangers of relying on opposition support for a flagship measure after he personally ensured that Tony Blair’s schools reforms survived with Tory support in 2006 three months after he became leader. Within months, supporters of Gordon Brown forced Blair to name the date of his departure the following year.
As the debate was under way in the Commons the prime minister moved to shore up his position amid anger in the party over allegations that Lord Feldman, the Tory co-chairman, described grassroots activists as “mad swivel-eyed loons”. Lord Feldman strenuously denies having made the allegations.
In his email to party members, Cameron wrote: “I am proud to lead this party. I am proud of what you do. And I would never have around me those who sneered or thought otherwise. We are a team, from the parish council to the local association to parliament, and I never forget it.”
But deep divisions in the Tory party were highlighted in the commons when Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, and his long standing ally Owen Paterson, the environment secretary, joined more than 100 Tory MPs to vote against Cameron in favour of an amendment that would allow registrars to opt out of conducting same sex marriage ceremonies. This amendment failed as did an amendment to protect the religious beliefs of a person who believes marriage can only take place between a man and women. All votes were classified as free which meant that MPs could vote according to their consciences.
In one of the most dramatic moments the former defence minister, Sir Gerald Howarth, complained to a lesbian member of the prime minister’s policy board about “the aggressive homosexual community”. Howarth made the remarks after Margot James, the MP for Stourbridge, said that the legislation was part of recent changes that have created a level playing fields for everyone regardless of sexual orientation.
The prime minister came under fire from the anti-gay marriage MP Tim Loughton after his amendment, which would have legalised civil partnerships for heterosexual couples, failed after the deal between Labour and the Tories. Loughton warned of a “grubby deal” between the two frontbenches as he told MPs: “We are in danger to a stitch up, a last minute stitch up between frontbenches.”
The deal was reached after the government had warned earlier in the day that the Loughton amendment would have threatened the entire bill by adding £4bn to the costs and delaying its implementation. The costs would have come from increased pension survivor rates for new civil partners.
The government agreed during the day to a Labour request to amend its own plans by launching an immediate review into extending civil partnerships to heterosexual couples. The goverment had initially said it would do this no later than five years after the passage of the bill, though the equalities minister Maria Miller said the Labour amendment would make little practical difference.
The deal meant that the government amendment, altered by Labour, was approved by 391 to 57 votes, a majority of 334.
But Miller indicated that the review could end up leading to the abolition of civil partnerships once gay marriage becomes legal. She told MPs of the review: “It is important for us to understand what the demand is among individuals who might wish to embark on such an arrangement.”
Labour sources said that the party, which had announced earlier in the day that it would abstain on the Loughton amendment after overnight warnings from the government about the threat to bill, denied that Miliband had embarked on a double U-turn.
One source said: “We had an eleventh hour appeal from the government that they did not have the numbers to defeat the Tim Loughton amendment. They made repeated approaches to us at ever increasing levels.
“Ed’s overriding priority is to ensure that the bill gets on to the statute book. Ed and Yvette Cooper will therefore be voting against the Tim Loughton amendment. We expect a large number of MPs to join Ed and Yvette. Since there was a genuine threat to the bill Ed decided the best thing to do was to act in this way.”
The leaders of all the main parties offered all their MPs, including ministers and shadow ministers, a free vote on the grounds that marriage is a “conscience” social issue in which the party whips have no official say. But the prime minister devoted government time to the gay marriage legislation in the belief that it would help reach out to centre ground voters who may feel uncomfortable about supporting a party whose leader voted in favour of the retention of section 28 as recently as 10 years ago. A source close to Miller said: “We are pleased that the House has accepted our amendment offering a review of civil partnerships and that our warnings around the potential delay to same sex marriage have been heeded. A review is the right way forward and no changes should be made to civil partnerships, without being fully thought through.” Tory supporters of the bill were scathing about some of their fellow MPs. One said: “You know how to vote when you see who’s in the other division lobby.”
One minister said: “We are such an inclusive party we have our own opposition built in. We generally shoot ourselves in the foot and then rely on the Labour party to finish the job for us. And all the time we seem to have a smile on our face.”
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Gay marriage debate highlights deep divide in Conservative party
David Cameron forced to look to Labour to save bill as Tory opponents attempt to limit its scope
Deep divisions in the Conservative party were highlighted late on Monday when Tory MPs clashed during a lengthy debate on the gay marriage bill which survived a series of challenges from traditionalists.
Tory reformers expressed exasperation when a former defence minister warned of an “aggressive homosexual community”.
Sir Gerald Howarth, knighted on the advice of the prime minister after losing his ministerial post, made the remarks when Margot James, who was recently appointed to the Conservative policy board, said that the equal marriage legislation would level the playing field after gay people suffered discrimination in the 1980s. James, who is lesbian, said: “I do recall in the 1980s, and even the 1990s, a freezing effect, I would call it, on the lives of gay people and other minorities because at that time the majority were at liberty to discriminate against us in employment and in every other walk of life practically.”
Howarth replied: “I warn you, and MPs on all sides of the house, that I fear that the playing field has not been levelled. I believe that the pendulum is now swinging so far the other way and there are plenty in the aggressive homosexual community who see this as but a stepping stone to something even further.”
The clash between the two Tories came as traditionalists failed in a series of bids to limit the scope of the bill. An amendment to allow registrars to opt out of conducting same sex marriage ceremonies was defeated by 340 to 150, a majority of 190. An amendment to protect the religious beliefs of a person who believes marriage can only take place between a man and women was defeated by 349 to 148, a majority of 201.
An amendment to extend civil partnerships to heterosexual couples, which had prompted government warnings that the bill could be derailed, was also defeated after the Labour party swung behind the government. The amendment, tabled by the anti-gay marriage Tory, former children’s minister Tim Loughton, was defeated by 375 to 70 votes, a majority of 305.
The gulf was so great during the debate that the issue of same sex marriage was a fight as “noble” as the abolition of the slave trade, or but another “stepping stone” for the “aggressive homosexual community”. Passions ran high in the chamber even before the supposed “wrecking amendment” on the extension of civil partnerships reached the Commons. The debate opened on the raft of amendments designed to ensure that the bill did not discriminate against teachers, registrars and others opposed to gay marriage on grounds of principle.
David Burrowes, a Conservative MP who proposed a series of amendments, argued: “This is not a marriage bill, it’s an unfair dismissal bill” (for registrars and others with conscientious and religious objections).
The nation was, he exclaimed, “as divided” as the Conservative parliamentary party on the issue. And legislation was taking the country “into a whole new terrain of legal challenge”. No registrars should be compelled to act against their beliefs or be sacked for adhering to the views held by a majority of Tory MPs and “millions of others in this country”.
Where Burrowes saw potential conflict, the Labour MP Stephen Doughty, (Lab, Cardiff South and Penarth) saw harmony, literally.He said the Commons should “look at the celebrations and happiness in New Zealand”, when they signed their own same-sex marriage bill, which manifested itself in “the singing of love songs”. He hoped for that here, too, “though perhaps not the singing”, he conceded.
The veteran Conservative Edward Leigh called for people who disagreed with gay marriage to be given protection under the Equality Act 2010. This was not, he assured the House, because he was “swivel-eyed”, though he conceded he became a bit cross-eyed late at night when tired. Nor was he “myopic”.
Neither was it to defend those who were being “beastly” or “horrid” to gay people in the workplace. “But I do think actually that same-sex marriage is different. It seems to many of us, if you dare to disagree with the new orthodoxy that gay marriage is the best thing since sliced bread, you are somehow breaking a new social taboo, you are doing something in your workplace, particularly in the public sector, that you should not be doing.”
When there was a clash between gay rights and religious freedom, in law gay rights came first, Leigh said. Citing an example of a housing association worker who was demoted for writing on Facebook that gay marriage was “an equality too far”, he said the government was legislating in a culture that had been “so coloured by political correctness” that “mild-mannered people expressing reasonable beliefs in moderate tones are treated like villains”.
The “outlandish views of the loony left of the 1980s” had become “embedded in high places”.
But the former Labour minister David Lammy said there should be an obligation on public servants to teach about gay marriage, as it would the law once the legislation had passed. He spoke of the “Windrush generation”, who arrived in Britain to signs reading “No Irish, no blacks, no dogs”. “That was illegal”, he said, and the Commons had declared it to be wrong.
Referring to the abolition of the slave trade in the 19th century, he said: “There was a split in this house for 20 years on whether black human beings were human or chattel.” “That is why this is a noble fight, “he said.
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MPs debate gay marriage bill: Monday 20 August as it happened
Andrew Sparrow’s rolling coverage of all the day’s political developments as they happened, including MPs debating the gay marriage bill at report stage and latest developments in the ‘swivel-eyed loons’ rowAndrew Sparrow
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Multinational CEOs tell David Cameron to rein in tax avoidance rhetoric
Burberry, Tesco, Vodafone and BAE Systems join CBI chief in lobbying PM to stop moralising on tax ahead of G8 talks
The bosses of some of Britain’s largest multinational corporations have urged David Cameron to stop moralising and rein in his rhetoric on tax avoidance ahead of a G8 summit next month.
Chief executives of companies such as Burberry, Tesco, Vodafone, BAE Systems, Prudential and GSK were keen to take a final opportunity to lobby the prime minister in advance of the meeting of political leaders in Northern Ireland.
Cameron has pledged to use Britain’s G8 presidency to tackle aggressive tax avoidance by multinationals, but is also keen to heed the counsel of his business advisory group, which he met with on Monday.
Also present was Google’s chairman, Eric Schmidt, despite the internet search firm coming under fierce attack from MPs last week because of its tax arrangements.
The president of the Confederation of British Industry, Sir Roger Carr, who was at the meeting, was among those who have taken issue with Cameron’s attacks on the ethics of big business tax engineering.
During a speech earlier in the day at a London event organised by Oxford University’s Said business school, Carr said: “It is only in recent times that tax has become an issue on the public agenda – Starbucks, Google, Amazon – businesses that the general public know and believe they understand; businesses with a brand that become a perfect political football, the facts difficult to digest; public passions easy to inflame.”
In what appeared to be pointed criticism of increasingly firm rhetoric from Cameron on multinational tax engineering, Carr insisted tax avoidance “cannot be about morality – there are no absolutes”.
In January the prime minister used a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, to put a marker down on questions of tax structuring by big business. “Some forms of avoidance have become so aggressive that I think it is right to say these are ethical issues,” he said, urging multinationals to “wake up and smell the coffee”.
Carr said: “Tax payments are not, and should not be … a payment viewed as a down payment on social acceptability, or a contribution made by choice in order to defuse public anger or political attack.”
The CBI boss, who is being talked of as a successor to Dick Olver as chairman of BAE Systems, invited the G8 to consider three points in relation to tax reform:
• Avoiding the moral debate – “it’s all about the rules”.
• Fixing the rules on an international stage, not unilaterally.
• Consulting on proposed changes with business.
A Downing Street spokesman said the specific controversy generated by Google’s tax affairs was not raised during the meeting with business leaders, though discussions did focus on “explaining the tax and tax transparency part of the G8 agenda”.
Also speaking at the Said business school event was Margaret Hodge MP, chair of the public accounts committee and one of parliament’s most outspoken critics of tax avoidance. With Starbucks and the big four accountancy firms in attendance, she said: “Your time has now come on accountability. You are now being asked to answer certain questions and it’s important that we all engage.
“One could argue that the way some companies organise their affairs is anti-competitive to many British companies. Especially if you look at the way Amazon arranges its affairs.”
On Revenue & Customs’ appearance before her committee last week, she added: “Their approach, when they came to parliament last week was complacent and patronising, an attitude that actually didn’t help take the committee forward. I don’t think it helped members work closely together across my committee.
“In my opinion they are not aggressive enough. These are issues of how you judge individual companies, but at the moment I’m not clear how HMRC makes its judgments. So toughen up, HMRC.”
Other attendees at the event were representatives of retailer Marks & Spencer, which was accused of running its online business in a similar structure to Amazon’s, and pharmacy group Alliance Boots, which recently relocated its headquarters to Switzerland.
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