Published in Daily Mail

It’s a longstanding tradition in Parliament that the process of legislating on contentious ethical issues and troubling moral dilemmas must respect the conscience of each individual MP. And so members are usually granted a free vote on the matter at hand, especially if it touches the transcendent, metaphysical and religious. This has long been the case with such emotively-charged concerns as capital punishment, abortion and embryology – matters upon which, in a liberal democracy, the conscience ought not to be coerced.

Or at least that was the case until Tony Blair began his moral crusade to impose ethical uniformity upon us all, in the exalted name of human rights and under the sinister guise of liberty and equality. Continue reading →