A change I can believe in

I had for a while avoided the Facebook meme that had been doing the rounds; 25 things you probably didn’t know about me, or whatever it was being called. Eventually I caved, partly from boredom one afternoon, but chiefly because one or two friends of mine had produced some really entertaining ones. That left me a little bit of a challenge, so I took the bait.

Anyway, the upshot of this is that I’ve been taking a lot of flak from some of my friends who are die-hard NuLabourites , or at least anti-Tory. I make no secret of the fact I’m a bit of a Toryboy. While my ideology is a damn sight more libertarian than the Conservative party will ever be, I have faith that they are the best chance we as a nation have to take us forward.

At last year’s Pride event in Glasgow, I joined the LGBTory contingent to fly the flags – the Tree and the Rainbow. I suppose there’s some irony that the Tory emblem used to be a torch. Now, putting the Tories and the gays together is difficult enough, given the lingering memory of the deplorable Section 28 legislation. Putting the Tories and the gays together in Scotland is setting the cat loose amongst the pigeons, to put it mildly.

This is a horrific and sweeping generalisation, but the Scots by and large hold Thatcher (ergo the Tories) responsible for the Poll Tax debacle and a whole host of policies that they felt victimised them as second-class to England. Rightly or wrongly, the feeling persists. The amount of people walking up to our stall and commenting that we had brass for showing up was unnerving, but equally there were some who showed an interest in what we had to say for ourselves.

I should also point out that the SNP, Lib Dems and even the SSP all managed to muster an appearance at the event. Conspicuous by their absence were Scottish Labour. Insulting by their overtures were some of the SNPs, who suggested that they were really Conservatives, but were supporting the SNPs until they got independence. It appears the notion of One-Nation-Tory appeared to have slipped them by, not least that the SNP tend towards a more socialist agenda, but I digress.

The Tory party of today is a very different beast from the one that left office in 1997. The leadership has come to realise that outmoded social philosophies have no place in today’s political sphere. I will take no part in acting as an apologist for legislation that I believe did massive harm to an entire generation of young boys and girls struggling to come to terms with their sexuality within a system that was skewed against them. It was designed to protect, but it did precisely the reverse. It was ill-thought out and unforgiveable.

So, if it was unforgivable, why should I as a gay man consider voting for them, let alone actively support them at a Pride event? The answer is simple: because I recognise that the party has evolved. You can’t hold them to account for the sins of the father – we held them to account in 1992 when they were reduced to the most tenuous of majorities, and we destroyed them in 1997. We have given them our judgement, and they have spent over ten years in the wilderness as a result. It has given them a lot of time for soul-searching, and a lot of time to learn.

Which brings me back to the Facebook meme. One of my friends works for and was marching with Stonewall at Glasgow Pride last year. He is, and I suspect will forever be, a New Labour supporter, a point he made very clear in his ‘25 things’. It was one of his 25 though that I found incredibly insightful, intentional or not. Whether or not New Labour wins a fourth term, they have revolutionised the social agenda. Just as the Tories taught Tony about the economy (though Brown sadly failed to learn the lesson), Tony taught the Tories that society has evolved, and reminded them that they were once the party of liberty in society as well as in the economy.

As New Labour, no longer new and showing the strain, twists and regresses into a pseudo-authoritarian regime apparently determined to tell us that Big Brother Brown knows best, the Tories appear to have forged a new identity. I just hope that they follow Churchill’s example and restore the freedoms that a Labour government seem determined to deny us.