The prime minister David Cameron yesterday made a concession to his Tory party colleagues, and promised a “free vote” on the proposed law to allow civil marriage equality for lesbians, bisexuals, trans people and gay men in England and Wales. Just the day before the government was saying the vote in the House of Commons would be subject to a government whip, meaning Tory and Lib Dem MPs would be instructed to vote for equal marriage.
A “free vote” means each Tory and Lib Dem MP will decide for themselves, as a matter of personal conscience, political conviction, or based on the weight of the mail bags for and against from their constituents.
Tory party sources told the BBC last night that they were still confident that the bill would be passed.
Over recent days there have been some rumblings of Tory discontent, mainly from the right wing, and some ministers, like the right winger Owen Paterson, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, and children’s minister, Tim Loughton, started publicly saying they would oppose the bill, or were demanding a free vote because they saw it as a matter of ‘conscience’.
On the other hand, the right wing Catholic MP Iain Duncan Smith recently surprised many people when he said he would support equal marriage.
Just yesterday, two Tory MPs, the Justice Minister Crispin Blunt, and the PM’s Parliamentary Private Secretary, Desmond Swayne, recorded messages of support for the @Out4Marriage campaign, and PinkNews expects to publish a supporting video from a senior cabinet minister today.
It’s still very early days yet, the consultation is still open and the draft bill hasn’t even been published. Most Labour, Lib Dem and the majority of Tory MPs are likely to vote for equal marriage, which should be enough to see it passed in the Commons. At the Coalition4EqualMarriage site, the tally of MPs likely votes so far is 171 in favour, 47 against, with 432 unknown or neutral.
Check to see if your MP will vote for or against equal marriage
Not sure who your MP is? Use your post code to find out.
You can
- sign the petition,
- email your MP asking her / him to support equal marriage, and
- respond to the public consultation,
all at the Coalition for Equal Marriage.
C4M petition fakery?
Over 530,000 people are supposed to have signed the Coalition for Marriage petition, opposing equal marriage, and a journalist at PinkNews investigated this claim last month and cast significant doubt on this claim. He showed, for example, that you could invent fake email addresses and still sign the petition. It is estimated that many of the 530,000 signatures are likely to be fake votes. The same technical problem affects the equal marriage petition (with about 57,000 votes).
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We now know that the “senior cabinet minister” referred to, is Theresa May, who has made a video in support. It’s also significant that Iain Duncan Smith, like many Catholic politicians in the US, have expressed support. There is dissatisfaction on the Tory back benches - but that’s it, back benches of just one party. There should be no serious problem getting this through the Commons. The wild card is the House of Lords.