An extraordinary thing happened on BBC's Question Time last night when the new Home Secretary, Theresa May, explained that she has changed her mind about several key issues related to gay rights.This shouldn't be unusual but it is... and other politicians should pay particular attention to the absence of vituperative comment from her opponents on the panel after May confessed her change of heart on gay adoption and Section 28.
There were no cries of "u-turn" or "hypocrite" from Caroline Flint, Menzies Campbell or Shami Chakrabarti and the look on Theresa May's face suggested that repenting her illiberalism was pretty cathartic.
More importantly, both she and her political opponents were warmly applauded by the studio audience who appeared to appreciate the maturity of the discussion.
There's been a lot of talk about the 'new politics' since the formation of the Coalition Government and most of it has been meaningless but a willingness to accept that a politician can change their mind without the sky collapsing is a genuine advancement and we should all welcome it.
3 comments:
...if only I could really believe it; a leopard can't change it's spots, as they say.
We have a homophobic government and Theresa May was emblematic of that for her previous parliamentary voting.
The lady's for turning - but not the right sort of turning. Not that the gays would want someone as uggers as her :-O
I can't believe I'm going to say this but I think they deserve the benefit of the doubt.
Whilst it seems possible that the Tories' newly-found enlightenment was prompted by political expediency, the outcome is the same as it would have been if it had come about because of a fundamental re-evaluation.
There are now ten openly gay Tory MPs... that's two more than Labour has. This, in itself, suggests Theresa May's change of heart deserves to be taken at face value.
I have to disagree. It's a volte-face of epic proportions and a persons opinion on matters of sexuality don't, as a rule, turn on a dime.
I'd also dispute whether the net result of a genuine change in opinion is the same as a phoney one or that openly gay Tory MPs will make a blind bit of difference.
After all, the last Tory government didn't have very emancipated policies regarding prostitution but it didn't stop plenty of them from dipping their wicks.
Whilst your desire to find positives in the piebald center right mess the coalition government promises to be is laudable I just can't get it up for a cabinet filled with hawks and windbags like Hague and Osbourne. The Tories are equal parts ineffectual creeps and unalloyed evil.
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