David Cameron is planning to fast-track legislation for gay civil marriage through parliament, but today’s Daily Mail underlines that his own MPs are dragging their feet over the legislation. The paper reports that at least 118 Tory MPs have expressed their opposition to the plans in letters to constituents or interviews with journalists, and they’re not just the usual suspects that Nick Clegg might accidentally label ‘bigots’. They include openly gay Conor Burns, who told his local newspaper that ‘I marvel at why we’re bringing this forward. There is no clamour for this at all within the gay community’. Wirral West MP and minister for Disabled People, Esther McVey, holds similar views, telling a constituent in a letter that she’s ‘concerned that re-defining marriage is unnecessary given the established legal rights’.
There are other Conservative MPs who are completely torn about the issue.
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