May used Europe to push through gay marriage

One thing on which David Cameron, Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn were all agreed last week was that topping the list of the “Cameron legacy” was gay marriage. What no one seemed aware of was that, as I reported here in detail in 2013, the one politician who was far more responsible than Mr Cameron for suddenly pushing it to the top of our political agenda was the vicar’s daughter, Mrs May herself.

There had been no mention of gay marriage in the Tories’ 2010 election manifesto. But four days before that election, Mrs May published a virtually unnoticed pamphlet in which a section on “gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender rights” promised that her party would consider legalising “same-sex marriage”.

Once in government, she joined forces with gay rights groups and her new colleague Lynne Featherstone, the Lib Dem equalities minister, to drive their cause relentlessly forward.

But this too was little noticed because they did so not in Westminster but through that shadowy institution in Strasbourg, the Council of Europe, aided by a judgment in its attendant European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

So successful were they in getting their way with their European colleagues that in March 2012, when Although gay marriage was hailed as ‘Cameron’s legacy’, it was Theresa May and her Lib Dem colleague Lynne Featherstone who pushed it through using the Council of Europe Britain held the Council of Europe’s presidency, Featherstone was able to make it the theme of her keynote speech to a “closed conference” in Strasbourg, from which the public was excluded. The other main speaker was a British judge from the ECHR. The delegates agreed to set June 2013 as the deadline by when as many of their 47 countries as possible would make gay marriage legal.

When, in February 2013, this bombshell was sprung on Parliament, so many MPs were swept along by the politically correct pressure which had been built up around the issue – including many who would previously have opposed such an idea – that only 133 Tories voted against it. Within months it was the law of the land.

Whatever one’s view of gay marriage, they had pulled off a remarkable political coup. And if this shows how skilful and determined Mrs May can be in getting her way behind the scenes in Europe, some might hope that this bodes well for our forthcoming negotiations on Brexit. described the Climate Change Act as “a unilateral and monstrous act of self-harm”. The Department for Energy and Climate Change is to be abolished. Responsibility for energy policy (no mention of “climate change”), has been returned where it belongs, to the ministry in charge of strategy for our trade and industry.

If this marks the beginning of the end for the most damaging collective flight from reality in Britain’s history, it is easily the most far-reaching achievement so far of Mrs May’s premiership. But we must never forget that all but five of our MPs voted for this lunacy, without any conception of what they were setting in train. The only way they can now atone for such criminal irresponsibility is by repealing the Climate Change Act.