At the start of Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, Rishi Sunak issued an apology on behalf of the British state for the harm caused by the ban on LGBT people serving in the military between 1967 and 2000. For me this apology touched a very personal chord. In the late 1980s I was close to someone who suffered considerably when she was thrown out of the army for being a lesbian. Someone who had their distinguished and lengthy period of military service cut short, who was humiliated in the process, and found it initially very hard to find employment commensurate with her skills and worth as a human being. All this happened to her just because she was a woman who loved other women.

On Tuesday evening MPs spent the best part of four hours walking round in circles voting on the Lords’ amendments to the Illegal Migration Bill.  Ludicrously we spent longer voting on the 18 amendments in issue than we spent debating them. The hours of walking around to vote were a terrible waste of everyone’s time.  The mechanics of voting at Westminster are crazy. With electronic votes taking say 5 minutes each, voting on the amendments could have been dealt with in about an hour and half.   

IN October 2019, two women organised a meeting to set up a new gay rights organisation. One was a former Stonewall fundraiser; the other had been a founding member of the Gay Liberation Front in the 1970s. Their names are Kate Harris and Bev Jackson and I am proud to call them my friends. Their intention was that their organisation would campaign for the rights of those who are same-sex attracted. 

Today is the 7th anniversary of the Brexit referendum. The economic damage is plain to see but Labour doesn’t want to talk about it and of course, neither do the Conservatives. The only way Scotland will re-join the EU is with independence.