Matthew Norman: Could you have a gay Prime Minister now? (Independent UK)

[marmar]

Matthew Norman: Could you have a gay Prime Minister now?

In Ted Heath's day, the last thing the PM needed was a baby. He didn't even need to be married

Published: 27 April 2007

With the leadership of the free world seemingly destined for either a black person or a female person, how thoughtful of Ted Heath to remind us that, of the three traditional major obstacles to great political power, only one can echo Sir Elton John by declaring: "I'm still standing".

What with Sir Edward having been highly reticent about his sexuality in life and marginally more so in death, for this he needed a little help from a publicity-hungry politician called Brian Coleman, who blogged away this week about the late PM having been a post-war cottager of some distinction.

Mr Coleman was described in the paper that reported his claim as "a senior gay Conservative MP", and the very presence of that nomenclature on a news page of The Times hints heavily at the amazing progress this country has made in accepting homosexuality as neither more nor less "normal" than its opposite. In truth, Mr Coleman, being merely a member of the Greater London Assembly, is a very junior gay Tory, "senior" in this context being the adjective newspapers use when they wish to make a story originated by a nobody seem more important.

But there is at least one senior openly gay Tory in the cuddly shape of Alan Duncan, and for that small mercy we must give thanks when for so long the Conservatives kept their gays either in the closet or in the backrooms of Central Office and Downing Street, running the show without credit or glory, much like Greek eunuchs in the Roman Empire.

Today, a gay man (I'm not sure about a woman; in its heart, one suspects, high-level politics still takes the Queen Victorian line on lesbianism, preferring not to acknowledge its existence) could be anything, all the way up to Chancellor of the Exchequer.

But there, alas, he would hit the silver lamé ceiling. For as Michael Portillo's failure to reach the play-off in a Tory leadership election just six years ago suggests, the Conservative Party, and indeed the country, is little more prepared than ever to accept the notion of a leader with a homosexual past, let alone a present and future. .....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://comment.independent.co.uk/columnists_m_z/matthew_norman/article2488801.ece