Following the elections last week, the House of Commons now has the largest number of openly gay, lesbian or bisexual members of any legislative body in the world. The Guardian compares this to 1997 when Stephen Twigg for Labour defeated sitting Conservative Michael Portillo.
The day after Twigg’s victory, Chris Smith, an MP since 1983 and out since 1984, became the first openly gay secretary of state – culture, naturally. Later that year, Angela Eagle came out: the first openly lesbian MP since Maureen Colquhoun, who had been deselected in the 1970s. The years rolled by and anti-gay legislation was rolled back. The despised section 28 was ditched, and civil partnerships then equal marriage made it on to the statute books. Now Britain finds itself with the queerest legislature in the world: 32 of the United Kingdom’s 650 MPs calling themselves gay, lesbian or bisexual. At 4.9%, this pretty closely reflects what researchers believe to be the sexuality of the population as a whole: an impressive achievement, still to be matched in matters of gender or ethnicity.
So who are the LGB MPs (the T, for transgender, is still missing, none of the four candidates who stood this election won their seat)? Twelve are Conservative, 13 Labour, the rest Scottish Nationalists. Among them are veterans such as Eagle, Chris Bryant, Alan Duncan and Crispin Blunt. Newcomers include former NUS president Wes Streeting, who follows in the footsteps of Twigg, also an NUS man. Overall, on 7 May, there were 155 out LGBT candidates. And in two constituencies last week – Lancaster & Fleetwood and Milton Keynes South – both the Tory and Labour candidates were gay, lesbian or bisexual. At the end of the last parliament, the Conservatives had the most LGB MPs, ceding that position to Labour this time around. Proportionally, though, the SNP is now by far the gayest party in Westminster, with 12% of its MPs chalking themselves up as sexual minorities.
Mhairi Black, SNP, is lesbian and the youngest MP since the 18th century.
Pink News has a list of the MPs who are LGB taken from a report by the LGBT Representation and Rights Research Initiative from the University of North Carolina. Five SNP MPs, including Mhairi, were excluded from the list as their party did not issue a list of their LGBT candidates before the election (Labour, Conservatives and Liberal Democrats did). The revised figures are:
Labour 13
Conservatives 12
SNP 7
Among the Liberal Democrats who lost their seats were four openly gay former MPs.