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European Elections and the UK Gay, Transgender Voter

All things considered, the Greens deserve the LGBT vote on Thursday
 

UK Gay News Commentary

Unfortunately, the European Parliament elections come at a time when the UK is all abuzz with the expenses furore at the Westminster Parliament.  This will inevitably mean that this week’s EP elections in the UK (on Thursday) will more than likely be a referendum on the British Government’s handling of the matter – and of what the electorate think of the ‘big three’ parties and their MPs in Westminster.

This is a pity as two of the ‘big three’ UK political parties, Labour and Liberal Democrat, have generally served the LGBT interests well in the European Parliament, just as they have at Westminster – that is apart from Home Secretary Jacqui Smith and the questions over some high-profile deportations of gays seeking refuge in UK from tyrannical countries.

On the other hand, the Conservatives are certainly a strange lot when it comes to LGBT issues.  Leader David Cameron has been insisting on the one hand that the Tories are “gay friendly”, but on the other hand he indicated almost a year ago that the party intend to jump into the European “political bed” and form a new political group with mainly Eastern European right-wing parties, including the homophobic Polish PiS (Law and Justice Party) which is a little to the left of the British National Party.

Can the LGBT voter really trust the Conservatives?  Interestingly, no Tory candidate has signed-up, as of this writing, to ILGA-Europe’s 2009 European Election Pledge of 10 key issues that are wanted to see advanced at the EU level over the next five years.

UK Gay News considers the Tories do not deserve the support of the gay voter in the European Parliament elections.  Others parties it is suggested to avoid include the British National Party which seems to suffer from every phobia in the book.  This is the one party that all the others fear, mainly because of their racist policies.  But they are homophobic too.

Then there is the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) which wants the UK to pull out of the European Union, yet it also wants to send MEPs to the European Parliament.  If they want the UK out of Europe, then the Parliament at Westminster is the place to do this. 

But having a lot of candidates seeking election, and having good results in the last election (16.1% of the vote), does get them a couple of party political broadcast on the telly. 

Their current leader, Nigel Farage, openly boasted to foreign journalist in London earlier this mongth that he claimed  £2million in personal expenses from the European Parliament, far outdoing anything in the individual Westminster MP shenanigans. 

UKIP has no references to LGBT issues in its online manifesto and the party has not responded to our inquiries.  No UKIP candidate has signed ILGA-Europe’s ‘Pledge’.

On the positive side, the Jury Team looks a possibility worth considering by the LGBT voter.  Jury is a team made-up of independent candidates, has no ‘party whip’ and has some good basic policies.  A handful of candidates on the Jury Team lists have publicly highlighted LGBT issues.

While the Labour ‘report card’ is generally good, as previously mentioned, the Home Secretary has not given a fair and just ‘hearing’ to some gays seeking refuge in UK.  And only today the Independent on Sunday reported on how the UK Government faces legal action over the deportation of John Bosco Nyombi last year.  Earlier this year, a High Court judge ruled that Mr. Nyombi (referred to in the case as Mr. X) was the victim of unlawful deportation and that the Home Office was guilty of “a grave and serious breach” of the law.

Then there is the question of Gibraltar and how the UK Government has generally done little to combat the homophobic situation ion The Rock.  True, the Government recognises there is a problem in the British overseas territory, but has failed to come up with any meaningful action.

For this reason, UK Gay News is suggesting that the best choice on Thursday for the LGBT voter is the Greens.

The party’s two current MEPs, Jean Lambert (London) and Caroline Lucas (South East) have served the European LGBT community well and their voting record is superb.  There is no reason to believe that the Green MEPs in the new Parliament will not continue in the same way – it’s in their manifesto. 

And both MEPs have been formally recognised by their peers for their work as MEPs – Ms. Lambert in the equal rights/diversity field and Ms. Lucas for trade and industry.

Like Green parties in most other countries across the world, including the American Greens, the UK party has robust equality and diversity policies for LGBT persons in their published platform.  The UK Greens are in the European Parliament’s Greens/European Free Alliance group, currently with 43 MEPs from 14 member countries.

The important thing to remember is that in elections for the European Parliament a form of proportional representation is used.  This means that parties outside the ‘big three’ really do have a chance of having a candidate among the five or six MEPs elected in each large Euro-constituency.

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