Glad to be Tory
Why the Conservatives are wooing gay voters

source: The Economist magazine, 1 April 2004

"I want to hear condoms, condoms, condoms," David Bull, a TV medic, told a Conservative Party meeting in Westminster aimed at improving relations with gay rights groups. Afterwards, over coffee and biscuits-a ritual more associated with constituency scrabble tournaments than with heart-to-hearts about the party's sexuality-campaigners and candidates discussed the problems of "elgeebeetees" (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual people). All this from the party whose rejection a couple of years ago of Michael Portillo, the front-running leadership candidate, was put down by many to his admission of a homosexual encounter; the party that, according to Ben Summerskill of Stonewall, a gay rights group, had a culture of homophobia in its headquarters. What has changed?

Public attitudes to gays, mostly. According to the British Social Attitudes survey, 70% of Britons thought homosexuality was wrong in 1985; by 2000 that had dropped to 47%. Moreover, there is a startling generational divide: 60% of people aged 60 and over still thought homosexuality was always wrong in 2000, but only 23% of people under 30 did. So homophobia is dying off.

The Tories are running to catch up. If they succeed, the electoral reward is twofold: they can compete better for the 5% of the electorate who are gay and also for tolerant young voters.

The party realised that, to appeal to gays, they needed some gay candidates, and to get some, they had to curb the selection panels run by ancient members of local associations. It has now banned both the veiled question gay candidates dreaded-"is there anything in your past that could embarrass the party?"-and pressure to parade a spouse as proof of soundness. The result is five gay candidates standing in the election next year.

Wresting gay voters away from Labour will be difficult, though. The government has just reaffirmed its credentials by introducing a bill giving homosexual couples similar property rights to heterosexual married couples. Also, the records of both Labour and the Liberal Democrats are more gay-friendly on the three totem issues-the right to adopt children and join the military, and the repeal of Section 28 of the 1988 Local Government Act-than the Conservatives'. Though Michael Howard, the Conservative leader, says he will vote for civil partnerships for gays, this may not erase recollections of his hardline voting record. "People have long memories for this kind of thing", says Ben Bradshaw, a (gay) Labour minister.

Yet some argue that Conservatives and gays fit naturally together. Ivan Massow, a businessman who left the party when he became fed-up with its anti-gay bias, says the Tories, like the royal household, have "high camp" appeal that could make them attractive to gay voters. And though Mr Howard is unlikely to become a pink pin-up anytime soon, many gay men admit there's something rather marvellous about Maggie.

A homosexual following, as Mr Massow points out, could do the Tories a lot of good. Marketing men have labelled gays "early adopters"-people who latch on to fashions first, followed by the duller masses. If gays took to the Tories, they might even make them hip.

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