BBC Radio 4 Westminster Hour featured an item by John Beesley on last Sunday’s edition that asked this very question. Andrew Boff, a member the GLA and the Conservative Humanists, was featured in the piece. You can hear it here.
The fundamental question raised in the piece was whether David Cameron and George Osborne – who tend to adopt socially liberal positions – can hold the Party together given the fact that the vast majority of Westmister candidates tend to hold more socially conservative positions. However, as was pointed out in the piece, the Conservatives tend to allow free votes on issues of moral conscience.
The concern I would have, however, is that the socially conservative appears to be in the ascendancy in the Party. This became obvious in the debates on the Human Embryology and Fertilisation Bill – where too many Tories appeared driven by doctrinal rather than personal positions. Given the fact that we live in a society where only around a third of our adult population has a belief in God, this seems to be a move in the wrong direction.
Filed under: Discussion | Tagged: Conservative Party, Religion, United Kingdom
