Britain’s PM faces gay marriage revolt as plots swirl

Reuters: British Prime Minister David Cameron is expected to see his ruling Conservative party split in two on Tuesday over his government’s plans to legalise gay marriage, a move critics say is not a priority for the public and unnecessarily divisive.

Although parliament is likely to vote to give the draft law initial approval, up to half of Cameron’s 303 Conservative lawmakers, including some Cabinet ministers, are expected to vote against it on what they say are moral and religious grounds.

Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron attends a news conference after a meeting at the Royal Hotel in Monrovia. REUTERS

In a sign of how divisive the issue has become for Cameron, the finance minister, the foreign secretary and the interior minister wrote a joint letter to a national newspaper on Tuesday, urging fellow Conservatives to vote in favour.

Behind in the polls, Cameron is trying to perform a tricky, and some analysts believe, impossible balancing act: to reconcile his desire to show his party is progressive with the views of many of those inside it uncomfortable with such reform.

Amid growing talk of a possible leadership challenge against him, many Conservative lawmakers say they feel Cameron is not a real conservative and is sacrificing what were once core party values on the altar of populism.

“He hasn’t got a lot of political capital left in the bank,” Stewart Jackson, a Conservative MP who opposes the gay marriage bill, told Reuters. “There is only so much the Conservative party is going to take. He has to deliver some authentic Conservative policies very soon.”

Such talk is rife among some Conservative lawmakers and follows a spate of articles in the British press in which a handful of MPs raised the possibility of replacing Cameron with someone else, a prospect most commentators regard as far-fetched before the next election in 2015.

Their grievances are numerous: that Cameron is allegedly “arrogant”, that he is too fond of the European Union for their liking, that the party’s policies are diluted by its coalition partner because Cameron failed to win the last election outright, and a nagging fear that he will not win the next one.

Polls show public opinion is on Cameron’s side this time - a YouGov poll for the Sunday Times on Sunday showed 55 percent favoured legalising gay marriage, while 36 percent opposed it.

However, the same poll showed the issue was not one that concerned most voters, placing only 12th in a list of their top 15 priorities ahead of the next election.

The new law proposes legalising same-sex marriage in England and Wales in 2014. It would also allow civil partners to convert their partnerships into marriages.