His Grace received an email during the debate from UKIP Intelligence (no ‘oxymoron’ cracks, please). It appears that if Parliament does not ‘regularise’ its civil-partnership/marriage provisions to accord with an imminent EU diktat, it will be imposed on the UK regardless.
Read it all and see earlier post
Well, then, if the UK got out of the EU its “marriage problem” would be solved.
Of course. But Cameron doesn’t want out. Which is why he probably went forward with this despite opposition from his own party. Better to ram in through now with Labor/Lib Dem help and let the public accept it as the will of Parliament rather than let the EU impose it later and have the public rise up against the Brussels bureaucrats imposing their will on such a sensitive issue.
Well, it’s a funny old world. As far as I can see, of the Conservative Party, 141 did not vote for, including five abstained and 35 were absent. As against this only 129 voted for David Cameron’s bill out of 305. That means only 42% were prepared to support the Prime Minister [and that is including those opposed who were heavily leant on in the last few weeks to support him yesterday]; almost 60% did not support the leader of their party.
It can’t be sustainable for someone to be ‘leading’ a party against the wishes of 60% of the Parliamentary Conservative Party, and a majority of the Constituency whatever the reasons for Cameron pushing this, and this news of the impending European legislation seems a likely candidate,. There is a whiff of treachery in Cameron over-riding his own party by calling for the votes of his coalition partner and the opposition to defeat the wishes of the party he is supposedly the leader of.
By the way, the new EU legislation is not just a problem for us in the CofE, but also for the Catholic Church in their homelands in Italy, Poland and a great many other European countries.
I am reminded of something Martin Reynolds said on this site a few years ago, about them going off to Europe to do an end run around the Church of England and the UK legislature. It looks as if that is exactly what has happened.
Ultimately David Cameron is unsustainable for the Conservative Party, whether that is decided by the party now, or by voters at the ballot box, by which time there won’t be much of a party given the desertions which have followed his actions from what I have heard in the last few weeks. His increasingly dictatorial style cutting short debate and shoving legislation on gay marriage and the crown succession through is concerning. Cameron has become a problem for his party and their hopes of election by their voters. Funny old world politics is.
By the way, yesterday’s vote in our system means the bill will now go to ‘committee’ for drafting amendments and then will proceed to the second chamber, the House of Lords.
Thank you, Pageantmaster. What party will benefit from the collapse of the Tories? UKIP? In any case, it sounds as if by the time this settles out, the damage to the nation will be done. Fortunately, as you have no written Constitution, what Parliament does it can undo, can’t it?
#4 Interesting question, Katherine. What party is in the same position as the Conservative Party? Of the three main parties, the Conservatives used to be on the right, but as Cameron is moving it to the left, the question is who is there to the right. A while back the late Sir James Goldsmith formed the ‘Referendum Party’ which was mainly single issue to do with Europe. To the extreme right there is the British National Party, which is pretty unpleasant and pseudo national-socialist – not a serious contender. Then there is UKIP, the UK Independence Party, pretty small, but scoring some goals against the Conservatives, but has not always been very credible [Imagine Basil Fawlty starting a political party].
But of course, nature abhors a vaccuum, so who knows. I suspect there is no real contender on the right, unless UKIP raise their game, but with the real possibility of the Conservative Party falling apart with their membership at loggerheads with Cameron’s leadership, they may be about to head into the wilderness, as happened under John Major when they fell to arguing over Europe.
It is hard to work out Cameron’s strategy, unless he is planning his own equal marriage with Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats, but it is unlikely the Lib Dems will like that, and Conservatives certainly won’t as they see the Lib Dem vote collapsing even faster than theirs.
I suspect there is no grand plan for Cameron and the other Etonian schoolboys running things in the governing coalition – it is what it looks like on the surface – clueless, inept and a shambles, tinkering with ephemera while the economy they were mandated to sort out burns.
The question is, what lead will the church give?
The new Archbishop has a calling, indeed. I hope he rises to it. I pray for your nation, Pageantmaster, and for mine.
#6 Thank you for your prayers, Katherine and I agree about +Justin’s calling. As you say, prayer would be good for all our nations.
There are some rather shocking statistics which show that membership of the Conservative party has halved since Cameron took over, so things are very serious for him. It is a party in a lot of trouble which is losing its support base.
By the way, if you want to know why Cameron is utterly clueless as to the Christian position, you need look no further than the church he has been attending where loony Affirming Catholic men who misled the Camerons are being replaced by loony Affirming Catholic women – is it any wonder the country’s leaders have no idea what the church’s teaching is?
I am not sure that after +Justin’s lacklustre performance in St Paul’s where he seemed to treat a genuine question on the church’s teaching on marriage as a trick question to be ducked, that we are going to get much leadership from him. And as far as the Communion goes, if his recent pronouncements are anything to go by, it looks like, however badly TEC behaves, he is going to support those who advocate a Gospel of Indiscriminate Inclusion with his Doctrine of Indiscriminate Reconciliation.