Anti-gay marriage MP Nadine Dorries comes bottom in deputy speaker race

Oct 16 2013
Written by Scott Roberts

Conservative MP Nadine Dorries, who rallied against the same-sex marriage act, has come last in the contest to replace Nigel Evans as one of the House of Commons’ deputy speakers.

The Mid-Bedfordshire MP received just 13 out of 551 votes in the 1^st stage of the contest.

The election was conducted under the single transferable vote system (STV), where voters list their preferred candidates in order on the ballot paper. As no candidate received more than 50% of the first preference votes, the votes were redistributed, over six rounds. Ms Dorries was eliminated first as she received by far the fewest number of first preference votes.

In the final round of voting, Conservative MP Eleanor Laing saw off Tory MP Brian Binley by 273 votes to 240.

Ms Dorries announced her candidacy last Friday in the London Evening Standard, saying: “I’m going to stand. I have a proven track record of achievement in Parliament.”

The MP was one of the most vocal critics of David Cameron’s policy to introduce equal marriage and wrote on the Conservative Home website in May 2012: “Gay marriage is a policy which has been pursued by the metro elite gay activists and needs to be put into the same bin.

“I have yet to meet a gay couple in my constituency or beyond who support it; in fact, the reaction has been quite the opposite. Great Britain and its gay couples don’t live on Canal Street in Manchester, shop in The Lanes in Brighton or socialise at Gaydar in London.

“Gay couples are no different from heterosexual couples and yet this policy transforms them into political agitators who have set themselves against the church and community. The policy is divisive, unpopular with the public, is tearing the Conservative Party apart and will influence absolutely no one in terms of the way they vote in the future.”

In October 2012, Ms Dorries claimed equal marriage could drain the Conservative Party of four million votes from Christian supporters – and that she could never support the policy until the UK had removed itself from the European Convention on Human Rights.

Ms Dorries famously managed to get herself suspended from the Conservative Party in November 2012 for taking part in the reality show I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here!

In May 2013, she tweeted: “If David Cameron wants Conservative Party to lose as many as fifty seats at next election he must push forward with the gay marriage bill”.