The Daily Mail asks if Peter Tatchell is the bravest man in Britain. The article comes after Mr. Tatchell was forced to step down as a Green candidate because of continuing brain injuries caused by Robert Mugabe’s thugs when he tried to arrest the dictator some year earlier (and not helped by vicious beatings at the hands of neo-Nazis in Russia).
He’s certainly a great loss to parliament, and the Mail’s question shows what a great campaigner for human rights he has become (twenty years ago Peter Tatchell was mainly known for ‘outing’ secret homosexuals). I’d vote for him, whatever party he stood for. Despite his ill health, surely few would object if a government gave him a peerage. This would mean that Mr. Tatchell wouldn’t have to be in parliament all the time, but being a Lord would give him extra weight when he campaigned. At the moment, Mr. Tatchell says that he would not accept a peerage, because it is “political patronage”, but surely if the offer was made by the three main parties, and he sat as a cross-bencher, it would be okay.
|Post to del.icio.us|
Filed in: Current affairs