This may have been cold comfort to conservative Prime Minister David Cameron as he suffered a humiliating slap in the face when more than half of Tory MPs refused to support his government on an issue in which he has personally invested political capital — about 40 of his conservatives either didn't vote or formally abstained, including attorney general Dominic Grieve.
The result meant the prime minister, who won the support of an estimated 127 Tory MPs, including one teller, failed to win more than half of his 303 MPs.
But the bill is likely to reach the statute book, assuming it has a safe passage through the Lords, after support from Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs ensured it got an overwhelming second reading...
The Roman Catholic church made clear that it would use the strong objections to the bill voiced by MPs across the house to maintain its campaign against same-sex marriage. The Most Reverend Peter Smith, Archbishop of Southwark, said: "Marriage is rooted in the complementarity of man and woman.
...A promised statement by the prime minister was hurriedly recorded for television cameras late on Tuesday afternoon four hours after Maria Miller, the equalities minister, had opened the debate.
One reformer said: "The prime minister couldn't even be bothered to turn up in the chamber. That is so fucking rude. This will have a corrosive effect. The politics around this have been so bad." ...Tory modernisers were horrified by the speeches by opponents of reform. One minister said: "Yes we can confidently say that the Tory party is divided – and divided right down the middle on this one. And with the help of four or five speeches we have been taken back more than 50 years to the horrors of the 1950s."
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