Stay up to date with notifications from The Independent

Notifications can be managed in browser preferences.

Heavens, it didn't take him long

The Tories are in a similar position to the cardinals who chose a reactionary Pope. Do they all have a death wish?

Joan Smith
Sunday 24 April 2005 00:00 BST
Comments

On Thursday, only two days after the election of a new Pope, a bill to allow gay marriage was passed by the lower house of parliament in Roman Catholic Spain. The measure, which goes far beyond the civil partnership for gay couples favoured by legislators in this country, is expected to be rubber-stamped by the Senate before the summer, confirming the waning influence of the Vatican on questions of personal morality. According to opinion polls the bill, which has been denounced by the Catholic church, has the support of around 66 per cent of Spaniards - only slightly more than the combined total of voters who say they will vote Labour or Liberal Democrat in the British general election next month.

On Thursday, only two days after the election of a new Pope, a bill to allow gay marriage was passed by the lower house of parliament in Roman Catholic Spain. The measure, which goes far beyond the civil partnership for gay couples favoured by legislators in this country, is expected to be rubber-stamped by the Senate before the summer, confirming the waning influence of the Vatican on questions of personal morality. According to opinion polls the bill, which has been denounced by the Catholic church, has the support of around 66 per cent of Spaniards - only slightly more than the combined total of voters who say they will vote Labour or Liberal Democrat in the British general election next month.

The polls may overestimate support for Labour, but they consistently show the Conservatives appealing successfully to only a third of the British electorate. This is in spite of the fact that their leader, Michael Howard, has put immigration - supposedly a vote-winner for the Tories - at the centre of his campaign. He has done it nastily, conflating legal immigration, asylum and terrorism, and at least one of the party's candidates has made wild claims about illegal immigrants being freed by the police under instructions from the Home Office. Yet the hoped-for bounce in the opinion polls has not happened, suggesting that more people are turned off by Howard's scaremongering than are attracted by it.

I can't say I'm surprised, because the country Howard is trying to appeal to - homogenous, white, with a population unused to foreign travel - no longer exists. Decades of legal immigration from former colonies and Europe has changed British culture, for the better in my view, and Howard's rhetoric sends shivers along the spine of anyone whose friends, neighbours or family might become victims of the unpleasant emotions stirred up by Conservative candidates. No quantity of electoral bribes, such as last week's announcements on council tax and stamp duty, can disguise the fact that on this and other issues, notably Europe, the Conservatives are stuck in the past. And that is where they will stay until they come up with a political vision for the country as it is, not as it was 50 years ago.

This puts them in a similar position to the Roman Catholic cardinals who chose the arch-reactionary Joseph Ratzinger as their new leader. Do these people have a death wish? The Spanish vote to legalise gay marriage could not have been better timed, demonstrating just how out of step Pope Benedict XVI is with modernity. Much has been written in recent days, excusing the new pontiff's membership of the Hitler Youth and pointing out that he came from an anti-Nazi family, so it is ironic that his rhetoric about homosexuality - "intrinsically evil" - echoes that of the Third Reich.

Defenders of the new Pope (and the leader of the Conservative Party, although they are harder to come by) will no doubt respond that it is not the job of great institutions to bow to the whims of fashion. Indeed Ratzinger's final sermon before his election attacked a "dictatorship of relativism which does not recognise anything as definitive" - a bit rich coming from a man who was about to become the world's newest dictator, presiding over an organisation which has no mechanisms through which his absolute power can be challenged. Anyway, it isn't relativism that conservatives have to fear but a value system based on universal human rights which insists on equal treatment for all, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, race or religion.

Despite being universally loved - so we are told, though I didn't care for him myself - the late John Paul II presided over a collapse in the church's authority just about everywhere outside Africa. If Benedict XVI does not soften his hard line on contraception, abortion, homosexuality, the ordination of women and relations with other faiths, that decline may become irreversible. Modernise or die is the lesson of history, which is why I'm so thrilled my man Ratzi won.

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in