Britain’s Conservatives: Triple Schism over Gay Marriage
December 10, 2012 in Conservative Party, Gay Rights, News & Current Affairs, Politics, Tory Party by Balthazar
Everyone head over to this article in the Daily Telegraph. In particular read the comments section.
You’ll see the UK Conservative Party fracturing before your eyes. A three way split is underway:-
1. The metropolitan Tory elite. Left on social issues, right on economics. ‘Dave’ Cameron is their hero but they had a soft spot for Blair… but sniggered at his wife. Louise Mensch, despite having run off to New York, is their heroine. The au pair reads her chicklit.
2. The ‘sullen army of the suburbs:’ lower-middle class Tories, haters of the poor, jealous of the rich, suspicious of Conservatives born with silver spoons in their mouths. Lovers of Margaret Thatcher. Norman Tebbit is their hero. Or possibly… ahem… Nigel Farage….
3. The blue rinse shire Tories. On election day they drive old ladies to the polling station. They attend their beautiful 12th century village church, in which they arrange flowers and suck up to the vicar. The thought of gays at the altar leaves them speechless.
Group 1. has managed to alienate groups 2. and 3. It’s an extraordinary achievement. Labour and UKIP will be popping the champagne. Imagine the size of Nigel’s grin!
Why has Cameron chosen to spit his party into three? It’s bizarre. Is it a legacy thing? Has he decided he’s going to lose the next election and wants to be remembered for gay marriage in church?
Isn’t he more likely to be remembered for killing disabled people? Or for LOLLING, on horseback, with Rebekah Brooks?
another gem from the comments:
It’s a rich seam… mother-lode! But I can’t believe they’re all genuine Tories. Some are too good to be true… Mischievous lefies!!
I can’t understand how people oppose this on moral grounds…..but even less so on practical grounds. These Tories can either be the people who helped bring about marriage equality, or the people who delayed it a few years, pissed everyone off, showed themselves up as homophobes (because there is no other reason to oppose it), and then it comes about under the next government anyway. Mad as a box of very rich frogs those Tories!
Just love watching the Tories implode – They are the very definition of homoPHOBIC – so scared of homosexuality they tremble so much they make the very foundations of the party shake – hysterical!
Good categorization of Tory voters, but on this issue I think group 2 will be largely indifferent unless overly provoked.
Labour support is probably as split as Tories (although activists largely united).
I’m not so sure you know – the suburban aspirational middle classes can be fiercely protective of their culture (or perhaps more accurately their hegemonic cultural position) as well as their economic advantages. You could argue that the proposal of such a change to the law serves as exactly the kind of provocative challenge to that hegemony which would result in a reactionary ire.
If this passes with the blessing of the party top brass and through the gritted teeth of the rank-n-file we could see ructions in the tory party well in excess of anything we’ve seen in decades. Spats about Europe could be reduced to petty squabbles by comparison.
“You’ll see the UK Conservative Party fracturing before your eyes.” Ha ha ha, wishful thinking lefties.
This site really is descending / has descended into a left-wing group-think joke. All this ridiculous ‘analysing the Tory voter’, people who oppose same-sex marriage are bigots, is really rather tiresome and inaccurate.
Man up people: the left has been beaten, it is finished, unloved, unwanted, and demonising those who do not share your own perverse political standpoint really won’t help your failed cause.
AG, that is pure deflection. Hardly a spirited defence of the Tory party’s position!
Plus Nigel Farage — hardly a group-think lefty — has produced pretty much the same analysis (see link below). Come on AG! Are you claiming the leader of UKIP is a swivel-eyed Trot? Haha!
They made similar claims in 1983. Were they right then too?
Yes.
Didn’t last though did it – assuming your prior assertions about Tony Blair being a spectre of leftist tyranny are to be taken at face value.
No side of the political divide is ever defeated permanently. The right has been in the ascendency for the past 30 years – but 2008′s crisis saw the zenith of it’s power and also exposed the ineptitude of it’s core ideology and its unsuitability for meeting the social needs of the future.
So, where is the phantom menace of the left then? Hiding under the settee? Locked in the toilet? Even the Labour party turned its back on socialism years ago.
As for Blair, I would be grateful if you could point out my ‘prior assertions’ about him being a “spectre of leftist tyranny”, albeit that many of his anti-terrorism laws would not have been out of place in the good old USSR.
As for 2008, well, rather a global economic crash brought about by economic mismanagement that the wonderous years of the soviet economy or that of practically every socialist nation.
Ha! I see Nigel has got his act together: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/dec/11/ukip-david-cameron-gay-marriage
I see why AG left the site. Talk about losing the plot. ‘Labour turned their back on socialism’ yet still their policies would ‘would not have been out of place in the good old USSR.’ ?????
You what mate?
and as for this:
“As for 2008, well, rather a global economic crash brought about by economic mismanagement that the wonderous years of the soviet economy or that of practically every socialist nation.”
Reads like nonsense created by a random word generator.
No doubt AG left out of pure embarrassment!
I did sit there scratching my head wondering how an entity that ceased to exist in 1991 could be held responsible for the decisions of 2008….!