No Bar Blues

Unlike Norman "Sorry, But I Had To Be Somewhere Else That Evening" Lamb, Tim Farron makes no bones about the fact that he abstained on principle at Third Reading of the same-sex marriage legislation.

Farron is going to become the Leader of the Liberal Democrats.

Andy Burnham went so far as to vote against IVF for same-sex couples. That is a matter of record. He has never remotely recanted that vote. Look at what he has said in recent weeks. He has used no form of words to anything like that effect.

He retained his Cabinet seat, so he could not have voted against party policy. In fact, he was one of three Cabinet Ministers to vote that way.

Burnham is far and away the candidate most likely to become the Leader of the Labour Party.

No one much seems to mind, or even to have noticed, except a few people below, and very occasionally above, the line on Comment is Free. But who asked them?

In any case, there does in fact exist a major political party in which failure to have supported Third Reading of the same-sex marriage legislation, never mind a full-blown vote against lesbian IVF, would be an absolute bar to the Leadership.

Those objecting on such grounds to Farron and Burnham ought to make their way into that party. They would find themselves entirely at home there.

For, although much play was made of people's leaving the Conservative Party over same-sex marriage, much less has been made of people's joining it, quite conceivably in larger numbers, since with the former in the camp that party failed to win in 2010 the overall majority that it secured with the latter in 2015.

At least a quarter and possibly a third of the Conservative Party's members, probably rising to over half of its activists and to a long way over half of its activists below quite a high age of 40 or even above, have joined that party specifically because of same-sex marriage.

That party has just won an overall majority over the party that is about to be led by Tim Farron, and over the party that is most probably about to be led by Andy Burnham.