Already overrun with anti-gay scandals, Britain’s Tory party has not-so-quietly nixed the political career of Philip Lardner and, until this week, a legislative hopeful who wrote on his website, about the gays: “I will not accept that their behaviour is ‘normal’ or encourage children to indulge in it.” David Cameron, the party’s leader, says he acted “within minutes” of learning about Lardner’s remarks, and suspended Lardner from the party. Except Lardner’s name will still be on the voter ballot, because the deadline passed to remove it, so Tory voters will still be indirectly asked to, uh, seat this man. [Independent]
Kieran
The British Conservative party has a long and shameful history of wallowing in bigotry and intolerance. Lardner’s comments are not—unfortunately—-particularly surprising.
Andrew
The Tories have problems, but my God would I take them over the Repukes in this country ANY day. As far as Conservative parties go, the Tories are fairly Modern.
tavdy79
Getting rid of Lardner isn’t exactly a loss for the Tories in terms of how many MPs they’re likely to get in Westminster. That particular seat, North Aryshire and Arran, was held by Labour (who hold 39 of Scotland’s 59 Westminster seats) with 44% of the vote; the Tories got 18%.
The Tories’ Scottish contingent in Westminster has never been particularly impressive. It’s currently 1 out of 59 MPs, and that single seat (Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale) was won on just 36% of the vote, with a margin of less than 1750 so is almost definitely going to see a major showdown between the big three.
Andrew
@tavdy79: Blame that on Maggie Milk Snatcher Thatcher.
The Cons had decent influence in Scotland before she used it to test her economic theories and fucked up the place in the process.
iltman
This is the problem for Cameron, no matter how much he says the the Tories have changed, homophobes like Lardner keep creeping out of the woodwork and show the old intolerant Conservative party is alive and well