Can the tories harness the gay vote?

The bar of the Amsterdam Hotel - "The Grand of Brighton's gay hotels!" - is a homage to Changing Rooms: all bold colours, blond laminate and what-were-they-thinking detail. Sitting at a window table looking out at the soaked seafront is James Ledward, the editor of G Scene, the city's gay magazine - and now a significant player in local Brighton politics.

"From 1992 until 1998, no gay group got a grant from the council, despite there being 35,000 gay people living here," says Ledward, who, disappointed with the Labour-led council's record on gay issues, set up G Scene in 1994 as a result. "I started asking questions and discovered that they considered the gay issue a vote loser. When money is short, innovative work and minority stuff is the first to go. Basically, the council has always been negative towards the gay issue."

And so, in advance of the local elections in May 1999, Ledward produced what was in effect a guide to tactical voting for his readers. He identified marginal seats in which gay voters held the balance of power, quizzed the candidates on three key issues (the repeal of section 28, the equalisation of the age of consent and the appointment of a council official to liaise with the gay community), then suggested how his readers should vote in order to support the most gay-friendly candidates.

"We targeted six seats, and Labour lost all six. It wasn't that we were anti-Labour, we were anti the way Labour behaved in Brighton. I wanted to show them that the gay issue was a vote winner, that you can mobilise the gay vote and win - and that's what I did. In those six seats, three LibDems and three Greens got in, and both parties put it down to the fact that gay people voted for them." In the 2003 local elections, he tried similar tactics, with similar results. "When the next elections come, it's our aim to get more gay councillors elected," he says. "We've identified 17 vulnerable seats; there's definitely a gay vote out there to be harnessed."

Is he right? Is there such a thing as an identifiable community of gay voters, ripe for exploitation by keen-eyed, gay-friendly politicians? Ledward's rallying of Brighton's gay vote could be dismissed as the short-term success of just another single-issue pressure group. But it has more resonance than that. With local, European and London mayoral elections looming in June, the parties are eyeing up any possible electoral advantage. And just as the votes of other minorities - Muslims, blacks and the elderly - have been in the past, the gay vote is now being courted as never before. Politicians of all hues are now engaging with issues of importance to gay people: homophobic bullying; the lack of equal pension and benefits rights; and the fact that anti-discrimination legislation does not extend to cover goods and services such as restaurants and holiday companies (Sandals currently bars gay couples from its resorts). If a party promised to act on all these issues, would it land a gay vote en masse?

The Conservatives seem to think so. After years of promoting intolerance and bigotry through legislation (section 28) and rhetoric (speeches about the sanctity of the nuclear family), the Tory leadership has renounced its old ways. On Monday, Charles Hendry, shadow minister for young people and Conservative party deputy chairman, is to host a summit for young gay men and lesbians called the Way Ahead. In the Gothic surroundings of the grand committee room at the Commons, Hendry and some 100 representatives from gay support organisations will get together to discuss what the Conservatives can do for gay people (and, given the potential dividend at the ballot box, what gay people can do for the Conservatives). Speakers will include supportive heterosexuals such as shadow ministers Tim Yeo and Andrew Lansley, the aspiring London mayor, Steve Norris, and the gay police commander, Brian Paddick. Apparently the event has Michael Howard's "enthusiastic support", though the Tory leader is not so enthusiastic that he will actually be attending.

Hendry says he was inspired to host the summit after visiting Allsorts, a Brighton project for gay youth. There, he met victims of homophobic bullying and, affected by their stories, decided something should be done. "It's more than a change of heart. We want to frame well-informed policies that reflect concerns out there," he says.

But isn't it a bit late for the Tories to pretend that their interest in the gay community is purely friendly? Hendry is at least willing to admit that becoming a more open, understanding party makes electoral sense. "I think you can drive away the gay vote, and that's what policies like section 28 did. A lot of people in the gay community are naturally conservative, but such policies have been a barrier in the past to them voting for the party. That barrier has been removed. We have changed."

Yeah, right, says Labour. Alon Or-bach, spokesman for the Labour Campaign for Lesbian and Gay Rights, calls the Way Ahead Summit "like sticking a plaster on a gaping wound". "It's not good enough to talk the talk - the Conservatives need to walk the walk, too. I simply don't believe they will do that. Labour has always been more representative and tolerant a party than the Tories, a fact that's demonstrated in our support for gay rights, from civil partnerships to the repeal of section 28."

And yet there are many gay Conservatives who will testify to the truth of the Tories' transformation. James Davenport, chairman of Gay Conservatives, explains Michael Howard's endorsement of civil partnerships in terms of Tory libertarianism. "It's the state intervening less in people's lives; that's what Conservatism should be about. Sticking your nose into other people's business is Labour party policy." He blames section 28 (which was introduced in 1988 by the then home secretary, one Michael Howard) on the ascendancy of his party's authoritarian wing in the 1980s. "The Conservative party is a broad church with an authoritarian wing and a libertarian wing. The latter aren't keen on state intervention and that fits quite well with being gay. There is no libertarian wing of the Labour party: socialism and libertarianism are mutually exclusive."

What's more, Davenport insists, now that they are blessed with both out MPs, such as frontbencher Alan Duncan, and out prospective MPs, among them Nicholas Boles and Iain Dale, the Conservatives have shed their image as "the nasty party".

All this, he thinks, may be enough to deliver more gay votes to the Tories, although, he argues, "in the main, people are less concerned about section 28 and more concerned about the tax they pay every month. Gay people pay taxes, use the NHS, and need to get to work in the morning: they are as concerned as anyone else with the economy, the health service and transport."

But isn't this another way of saying that the gay issue isn't an issue at all? If gay people don't vote primarily on gay-friendly grounds, is talk of a mobilisable gay vote irrelevant? Not necessarily. In her campaign for election to the European Parliament in 1999, Green candidate Caroline Lucas made a concerted effort to court the gay vote and was subsequently elected, her victory attributed in part to her willingness to engage with gay issues. It's nonsense to suggest that all gay people vote the same way, but there are certain touchstone issues that a majority will hold dear.

So the parties remain convinced that the gay mandate is out there, and the Liberal Democrats are equally keen to tap into it. According to Evan Harris, president of Delga (Liberal Democrats for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Action), if the Tories are opportunists, Labour are failures. Many of Labour's gay policies, he argues, were forced on them by European law. "They exempted religious organisations from the anti-discrimination employment laws, their civil partnership proposals are grossly inadequate when it comes to pension rights, and they refuse to extend discrimination laws to cover goods and services."

He may have a point. Several senior party figures, including David Blunkett, Gordon Brown, Ann Taylor and Margaret Beckett, did not vote to equalise the age of consent in the vote of 1998, and it was only after a string of defeats in the European court of human rights that the government lifted the ban on lesbians and gay men serving in the armed forces. "The government allowed a free vote on adoption for gay couples. How can that be an issue of conscience? Equality should be party policy."

In a shifting political landscape, the gay vote, mythical or not, remains a tantalising asset to a political party. Exit pollsters don't ask respondents about their sexuality, so there are no figures on how gay people vote. But a government estimate puts the gay population of the UK at between 2m and 3m, while tactics like Ledward's demonstrate the potential of the block gay vote. There is also an argument that being discriminated against makes you more likely to be a politically active individual: exactly the kind of supporter that the parties want.

Back in Brighton, Ledward has yet to be convinced by the Conservatives' new position, though he is keeping an open mind. "Yes, they were responsible for section 28, but that's now on the backburner. If we're going to talk to new people, we have to accept they were part of getting that changed. On their part, to successfully show that they're changing, they've got to pick something and stick with it. Coming down and saying you're going to work with the happy homosexuals in Brighton isn't enough."

Jess Woods, who runs the Allsorts project at which Charles Hendry had his epiphany, says she has no doubts that his concern is genuine, though she believes there is a cynical element to the Conservatives' sudden interest in gay men and women. "But the Labour party has not done all that it can for lesbians and gay men and as a Labour supporter, that disappoints me enormously. An event like this summit raises awareness of the plight of gay young people and that can only be a good thing. If it shames Labour into making more of an effort for gay people, all the better."

Or, as Ledward puts it,"Either sparks will fly at this summit and it will end up as a catfight, or something really interesting will come out of it. It'll be interesting whatever happens."