Not forgiven

Gay Pride London on a glorious Saturday and the gays are in a particularly exuberant mood. It’s a little too early for the drugs in Trafalgar Square – though some lost boys have the dreamy otherworldliness of the Vauxhall arches – and the beers flow freely if not from the fountains (and I for one would welcome a return of this tradition) then from the £3 a bottle booths helpfully adjacent the square.

The entertainment is the usual collection of third rate has beens who might have had a pash on a boy in school, out gay performers hoping the pink pound may fill the talent void at the heart of their performance, earnest activists respectfully listened too; all presented by some gay lad from the telly what you might see on the afternoon antique shows and the like. Its all dreadful rubbish but good fun with it and the rainbow flag flies proudly from St Martin in the Fields.

It is as the good Doc noted a proven fact that the gays will cheer anyone.

And then, to disprove the theory,  the Conservative party spokesperson comes on stage. The mood of the crowd instantly changes and he is roundly booed.

He echoes the recent comments of his Idiot Leader about the Conservatives and the Gays not having the best of histories.

The crowd boos louder.

It is perhaps recognised that being gay and Conservative should not be considered mutually exclusive – indeed there is surely a medical paper to be written on the number of self hating gay conservatives who lived lives of such hypocrisy during the last Tory government ( I was tempted to say theocracy but they were so far to the right of the established church that it seems unkind to genuine theocrats everywhere…).

It is perhaps more correctly noted that in this dysfunctional love affair one of the parties had only the apparatus of state to beat the other with.

And did so.

Am I not to be forgiven? Are we not all permitted our pauline moments? A bright light on the road to Chariots perhaps?

The Idiot Leader is a barely acceptable face to what remains fundamentally the same old nasty party. Allied with right to extreme right parties in Europe who’s national governments would consider section 28 a wimps charter, they continue their dog whistle approach to courting the base elements in the British character – “family” values, immigration, Europe, “fat cat” public servants and the same tired nonsense they spouted for 18 years, buying the votes of the populace while destroying the infrastructure of the state.

The Idiot Leader as recently as 2002 voted for the retention of Section 28. Not abstained, not held his nose and voted with the whip, voted in favour. I know it seems a tired cliché but take section 28 and play around with the gay bit to replace with black, Jew, woman, African, catholic.

Had the Idiot Leader, or any ordinary idiot, supported such legislation against black, Jew, woman, African, catholic, then you can be certain that they could apologise until the kingdom come, and in time that apology might even be accepted, but they would not have a political career today. 

 To support such nonsense is to subscribe to a view that inherent inequality amongst like people is tolerable. Of course the counter argument is that these are not “like” people. These are “these people”. It is scarcely a view of government that comforts but for the Tories it has always been “them” and “us”. This is a core political belief and while suspicious of anyone who might hold such belief I am equally suspicious of one who might say it has been cast off. In remarks and attitude over recent years, the case for the Cameron conversion is, at best, not proven.

And the Trafalgar square gays, in all their angel wings, glitz, leather and denim get it. It was a wonderful moment on Saturday to see a crowd respond to naked political posturing with a hearty loft of the aforementioned £3 bottle of beer stage wise. The bottles were, alas, of the plastic variety but as the spokesperson sloped off the stage it was a point well, exquisitely well, made.