Sack Chris Grayling

While at the launch of the Labour poster yesterday, David Miliband talked about the difference between Camera-on and Camera-off. The Tories say one thing on their election posters but behind closed doors think totally different thoughts.

And so it has just chanced that Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling MP has come under scrutiny for being filmed saying that he would not mind owners preventing gays from staying in B & Bs. This is obviously unacceptable from a high ranking member in a party which has attempted to rebrand itself as standing for "compassionate conservatism". This latest comment shows that while they're still conservative, they are by no means compassionate. Homophobic Tories are also not new. David Cameron last year took the Conservative Party out of the mainstream of European conservatism into a group which contains homophobic parties and other right-wing extremists. The Tory leader also shamed himself in an interview with the Gay Times last month,

The silence of David Cameron is also astonishing. What is he going to do? Will he keep his Shadow Home Secretary? Tell him off? Or should he sack Chris Grayling from the Tory frontbench? The silence shows that the Tory leader himself is not sure. Why could this be? Is he busy with parliamentary business? Or is the whole party's stance similar to Grayling's and he knows that secretly compassionate conservatism would mean sacking most of his frontbench?

Therefore I have one thing to tell David Cameron; Sack Chris Grayling. Sack him so at least you still keep the image of compassionate conservatism even if most of your party are not compassionate conservatives. The longer the Tories keep Chris Grayling in the Shadow Cabinet, the more damaging it would be for the party at the election.

For more information regarding Grayling's comments, visit http://www.labourlist.org/grayling-b--bs-should-be-able-to-turn-away-gay-couples