Turns out it Wasn't Jezza's Fault After All

 

Yes it seems that Brexit wasn't the fault of Jeremy Corbyn or decades of scaremongering about immigrant hordes. No the real culprit here was..... Gay Marriage!

Well according to the Daily Mail anyway,

The proposal, which had not been in the Tories’ 2010 election manifesto, was vehemently opposed by about half of his parliamentary party — who happened also to be the most Eurosceptic — and appalled countless members of local Conservative associations.

This was seized on by Nigel Farage. I had lunch with Ukip’s leader at that time and I recall two things above all from it.

First, how disgusted he was that I did not want to have a drink before sitting down; and second, how gleeful he was at the way the gay marriage row was sending shire Tories in droves to switch to Ukip membership. 

Though Farage himself is a libertarian, and definitely no moralist, he exploited this to the full.

This and the full part of the article is in a word bollocks. The only part of the narrative being peddled by Charles Moore that's even remotely accurate is that Same sex marriage was divisive within the Tory party. Everything else is simply misrepresented.

For starters David Cameron had already taken steps to appease his Eurosceptic base before Same sex marriage became a talking point in 2013. In 2009 back when Cameron was just a party leader he took the Conservative party out of the European Peoples Party, the EPP is the main coalition of right wing parties in the European Union. Many of whom like Germany's CDU are staunchly pro EU, and the group as a block opposed a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty which the Conservative party were campaigning for. Instead he took the Tory's into a coalition called the European Conservatives and Reformists, working together with parties such as the homophobic Law and Justice Party in Poland, the National expansionist Bulgarian National Movement which is hostile to minorities and dreams of a "Greater Bulgaria" annexation of other territories like Macedonia.

This was clearly a move designed to appease the Eurosceptics as it diminished the Conservative parties influence in the EU and allied them to some very strange and extreme parties. At the same time the Tory party was also building up opposition to the Lisbon treaty, though it was ratified in parliament.

But what about 2016 and Brexit/Bremain? Well its true that the same sex marriage vote split the Conservative party who voted 126 for to 134 against, but that doesn't mean that same sex marriage killed the UK's EU membership. All this shows is that the issue widened a rift within a party, we're currently seeing the same thing happening in the Labour party over Jeremy Corbyn. There were many options open to Cameron, including give a referendum on the EU and fight a winning campaign. What cost Cameron his job and his victory were his own failings.

The victorious leave campaign was based on two platforms, immigration, and austerity, remember the £350 million going to the EU that could go the NHS slogan? The one leavers have already backtracked on, IDS, and Farage. Both problems were the governments making, Cameron's government's spending cuts and refusal to either take steps to lower immigration, or educate the population on the realities of migration other six years gave his opposition free movement to whip up the mood against him. Hell he announced this referendum in 2013, that's three years head start he gave himself, and squandered.

Hell this one combines both slogans

Gay marriage wasn't even a bullet point on the leave list.

So no Gay marriage did not kill Britain's EU membership and Cameron's "legacy", he did with his own poor decisions and inability to fight a winning campaign.