In Monday’s Guardian, Julian Glover wrote that David Laws broke the rules of parliamentary expenses ‘because he could not bring himself to reveal that he loved his landlord’.
In Monday’s Guardian, Julian Glover wrote that David Laws broke the rules of parliamentary expenses ‘because he could not bring himself to reveal that he loved his landlord’. On the same day, in the Times, Matthew Parris, Glover’s civil partner, spoke of the ‘stinking hypocrisy’ which caused ‘the fall of a good man’ for no more than ‘an error of judgment’. The chief object of the couple’s onslaught was the Daily Telegraph, which broke the Laws story. It was the gay equivalent of being assailed by Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper at the same time. Because I work for the Telegraph, I am naturally biased, but I knew nothing of the story until I read it in the paper on Saturday, so I am not fighting my personal corner. It seems to me that Glover and Parris are missing the obvious point. It is true, as they both wrote, that many other ministers in the course of this scandal have had to pay back money, and yet have survived in office. But there is a difference between a genuine error of judgment — claiming, declaredly, for rather too expensive carpets, say — and claiming dishonestly. The latter is what Mr Laws did, by not mentioning, despite explicit rules on the matter, that his landlord was his lover. It is, indeed, understandable that Mr Laws did not want his sexuality to be known: one of the problems caused by ‘gay pride’ is that, like queer-bashers, it represents such an option as dishonest. But the issue here is painfully simple and has nothing to do with sexuality — Mr Laws didn’t have to take public money.
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