Pope Tony The First?

Actually, what really stands out here is Blair's strange delusion that he pushed through civil partnerships in the teeth of enormous opposition.

Civil partnerships already do not need to be consummated. There has never been any such need. So what have they to do with homosexuality, really? Yet the legislation fails to provide for unmarried close relatives. That is proof, as if proof were needed, that the point of this measure is to privilege homosexuality on the specious basis that it is an identity comparable to ethnicity or class, or even to sex (which is written into every cell of the body).

The legislation must be amended immediately to allow unmarried relatives, whether of the same or of opposite sexes, to register their partnerships. Then there would be no problem. If it had said that at the time of its enactment, then there would never have been anything more than a few newspaper stories about how same-sex couples were "planning to make use of a new law to protect elderly unmarried relatives living together from inheritance tax when one of them dies".

So why wasn't it set up like that?

See above, I'm afraid.