Who knows what will happen at tomorrow’s election. Labour is, as always, wary of predictions of a huge landslide. Many Tory candidates seeking re-election are clinging to the hope that their incumbency, and a swing to Labour and Lib Dems that may fall below expectations, will save them. But whatever the scale of Labour’s victory, a large contingent will be missing on the green benches when parliament returns on Tuesday 9 July: the many, many LGBT MPs who have not sought re-election, or who will lose their seats.

The website LGBT+ MPs in Parliament lists the 65 MPs in the 2019-2024 parliament who were generally known to be LGBT: exactly 10% of the UK’s 650 MPs, and broadly in line with census data, which suggests that 10 or 11% of the UK’s population identify as something other than heterosexual. Many MPs won’t publicly state their sexuality, either out of a general preference for privacy, fear of homophobia, or other factors. There is no reason why any MP should be obliged to out themselves (or be outed against their will, unless they have hypocritically backed homophobic legislation). Some may have not come out of the closet for the simple reason that they have not yet outed themselves to their own families. As recently as 2010 the-then Lib Dem MP  David Laws was caught in the expenses scandal for the simple reason that he had been frightened to tell his own mother he was gay, and that he was cohabiting in London with a male partner.

Sixty-five LGBT MPs may be an under-estimate. But let’s assume for a minute that the “LGBT+ MPs in Parliament” list is accurate and comprehensive. Of those 65 MPs, some 14 – almost 22% – are not seeking re-election in 2024. This a slightly higher retirement rate than for MPs overall (of the UK’s 650 MPs, some 132 – just over 20% – are not seeking re-election). And at least 20 of the 51 LGBT MPs who are seeking-election (most of them Tory or SNP candidates) are very likely to lose their seats.

It is almost certain that fewer than half of the 65 LGBT MPs who served in the 2019-2024 parliament will be serving in the next one. If the Tories and SNP have a particularly bad night tomorrow, and all their LGBT MPs seeking re-election are unsuccessful, fewer than 25 of these 65 (most of them Labour) will return to the Commons on July 9^th. As many as 40 LGBT MPs will have either stood down or been defeated.

The highest rate of attrition is likely to be in the Scottish National Party. Of the SNP’s 43 MPs some ten are known to be LGBT, and of these only two (Mhairi Black and Angela Crawley) are not seeking re-election. But most of the other eight are highly vulnerable, standing in seats in Glasgow, Edinburgh and the central belt that the Lib Dems and Labour have their eyes on. A former SNP MP who is gay and has defected to Alba, Neale Hanvey (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath), is also almost certain to lose his seat.

As for other minor parties, only one of the Lib Dem’s 15 MPs until dissolution, Layla Moran (who will almost certainly be re-elected in Oxford West and Abingdon), is known to be LGBT. Intriguingly, none of Plaid Cymru’s three MPs and none of the 19 MPs in Northern Ireland – still a socially conservative place, on both sides of the sectarian divide – are known to be gay.  And of the four constituencies where the Greens have a realistic chance of winning, only one (Bristol Central, whose Green candidate Carla Denyer identifies as bisexual or pansexual) might return an LGBT Green MP (oddly for a party which professes strong support for LGBT rights, few of the Greens’ most prominent politicians are LGBT themselves).

Of the 22 Labour MPs known to be LGBT, only one (Ben Bradshaw) is standing down, but another (Olivia Blake) may be one of the few Labour MPs who may well lose their seat (the Lib Dems are fighting hard to regain Sheffield Hallam, a constituency that once returned Nick Clegg).

While Labour was historically just as homophobic as any other party it has, since Chris Smith came out of the closet in the 1980s, been much more gay-friendly than the Tories. Three current members of the shadow cabinet – Steve Reed, Wes Streeting and Peter Kyle – are LGBT, two more than in 1997 (when only Chris Smith was out of the closet: while Peter Mandelson was in Blair’s cabinet as Minister without Portfolio from the very start, he was only “outed” as gay later).

That the sexuality of these Labour frontbenchers has been barely remarked upon, either before or during this election campaign, is a sign of progress. But apart from juvenile questions from the media about Trans rights (such as asking Kier Starmer whether a Trans woman with a penis should be allowed to use the ladies loo), LGBT issues have not featured in this campaign. They have been absent not because LGBT battles have all been won, but because Labour has tried its utmost to pivot from questions of identity politics to “bread-and-butter” issues such as economic competence, housing and public spending. There is nothing wrong with that of course, and there has been little overt homophobia within the party, or directed at Labour candidates in the mainstream media (social media being another matter). Conservative candidates, and former MPs, are a different story.

Of the 23 LGBT MPs who sat on the Conservative benches until parliament is dissolved, six – more than a quarter – are not seeking re-election: Chris Clarkson, Mike Freer, Nick Gibb, Dehenna Davison, Jamie Wallis (Britain’s only Trans MP, representing Bridgend) and Kieran Mullan. All these six represented highly vulnerable seats in London, the south coast, Wales or the northern “Red Wall”, and many of the 17 who are seeking re-election are also likely to lose their seats. The only two LGBT Tory MPs who are probably safe from a Labour landslide are both standing in safe Tory seats in the Midlands: Michael Fabricant in Lichfield, and Stuart Andrew (who has fled West Yorkshire, where his Pudsey seat was made even more vulnerable by boundary changes, to stand in Daventry instead). So as many as 21 of the 23 LGBT Tory MPs who sat in the 2019-2014 parliament may not be back after the election tomorrow. Who knows how many LGBT Tory candidates seeking election for the first time will be successful, but it’s a safe bet that there will be far fewer LGBT Tory MPs in the Commons when it returns on July 9^th.

The really shocking story is those LGBT MPs who have found themselves suspended, or had the whip withdrawn, and were unable to stand for their parties.  No fewer than six have found themselves suspended from the Labour and Tory parties before, or during, this election campaign: Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Labour, Brighton Kemptown), Mark Menzies (Conservative, Fylde), Nick Brown (Labour, Newcastle East) Rob Roberts (Conservative, Delyn), William Wragg (Conservative, Hazel Grove), and Crispin Blunt (Conservative, Reigate) (who does not appear on the “LGBT+ MPs in Parliament” list as an independent, but he has sat as one since October 2023). Five of these six are not seeking re-election at all, either for their old parties or as independents. While Rob Roberts is standing as an independent in Clwyd East (the successor seat to Delyn, which has been abolished by boundary changes) he is certain to lose in what will be a close Labour-Tory marginal.

Maybe the slightly higher rate of retirement among LGBT+ MPs is just chance. But it is certainly not down to age: most of the retirees, apart from the sixty-somethings Ben Bradshaw, Nick Gibb and Crispin Blunt, are in their thirties or forties; Mhairi Black is still in her twenties. No doubt some of them only became MPs at all because they sought election in marginal seats (Conservative associations and Labour CLPs can still be full of homophobia, and there is anecdotal evidence that some are reluctant to select LGBT candidates for safe seats). The likely Labour landslide has prompted many Tory MPs to announce their retirement, and because many of the Conservatives’ LGBT MPs are in marginal seats they may be retiring in great numbers than if a Tory victory was expected. Doubtless many LGBT MPs, regardless of party, have had enough of homophobic abuse on social media. But is also an uncomfortable truth that six of the retirees – the independents – have found themselves suspended from their parties because of allegations of misconduct.

The precise nature of the complaints against the two former Labour LGBT independents who are retiring (Lloyd Russell-Moyle and Nick Bown) is not yet known (and given the opacity of Labour’s disciplinary procedure, the allegations may remain unknown forever). But the three former Conservative independents – Mark Menzies, William Wragg and Crispin Blunt – have all been accused of, or found culpable of, conduct that is directly linked to their sexuality. Some might say their only real crime has been to be gay.

****

The allegations that Crispin Blunt faces – that he committed rape and was in possession of a controlled substance – are still sub judice, following his arrest in October and subsequent release on bail, and I won’t discuss them here. Mark Menzies and William Wragg, however, are in a very different position: neither has faced criminal charges, but both found themselves ridiculed and condemned in ugly trials by media, amidst much unsubtle homophobia. Not since the forced resignation of Admiralty Minister Tam Galbraith in 1962, amidst false claims that he had been the lover of the convicted spy John Vassall (which I have explored in my new book on the Vassall case) have politically careers been terminated so brutally by homophobic slander.

Mark Menzies’ story, which first hit the headlines in April 2024, is as follows. According to The Times, Menzies phoned his former campaign manager, now a party volunteer, at 3.15am one night in December 2023 to say he had been locked in a flat by “some bad people” and needed £5,000 as a matter of “life and death”. Hours later the former campaign manager paid him the sum, which had risen to £6,500, from her personal savings, and she was later apparently reimbursed from campaign donations. What had begun as a date with a man who Menzies had met through a dating website had become a case of abduction and blackmail, with the £5,000 demanded “for cleaning and other expenses”, after Menzies fell sick.

Rather than be seen as the victim of crime, and guilty of naivete but little more, the media’s reporting of Menzies’ ordeal was disgraceful. His false imprisonment was seen as comedy, not a sexual crime that can still befall many semi-closeted gay men in public life. Within a few days, Menzies announced he would not seek re-election in Fylde, his safe seat in Lancashire, “due to the pressures on myself and my elderly mother”. Even though the Tory party said that they could not conclude there had been any misuse of party funds, they did not restore the whip to Menzies, who remained an independent until Rishi Sunak called the election and parliament was dissolved in late May.

The same month as the Menzies allegations came to light, it was reported that another Tory MP in the north-west, William Wragg, had been blackmailed by men he had met the casual sex app Grindr. Wragg said he had been the victim of a honeytrap and had been coerced into providing the contact details of several other Conservative MPs to the blackmailer. “I was scared. I’m mortified. I’m so sorry that my weakness has caused other people hurt”, said Wragg.

The chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, said that Wragg’s apology was “courageous and fulsome”. But within a few days Wragg had been forced to quit as chair of the Commons Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, and as a vice-chair of the 1922 Committee. On 9 April he resigned the Conservative whip, and he sat as an Independent until dissolution.

To be fair to the Tory party, they did not withdraw the whip from him: he decided to resign the whip himself, and he had already said he was standing down as an MP at the next election anyway. But rather than be pitied as the victim of sexual crime, Wragg was widely pilloried, both by Tory-supporting media outlets and liberal ones. Even though Wragg had previously spoken about mental health struggles, and had taken a short break from his duties In 2022 during a bout of severe depression and anxiety, he faced only abuse from newspapers. The Guardian’s Marina Hyde sanctimoniously called for Wragg to resign immediately and cause yet another by election.

It also emerged that a least a dozen more people working in Westminster, including a minister and two political journalists, had been receiving unsolicited WhatsApp messages from two suspicious mobile numbers. Luke Evans, Conservative MP for Bosworth revealed that he was targeted  with a photo of a naked woman on WhatsApp, which was followed by a another message 10 days later. “I’m just pleased I blew the whistle, reported it to the authorities and it’s now being looked into,” said Evans. But Evans was a straight MP facing heterosexual entrapment. Few stopped to consider that gay MPs facing sexual blackmail might find it harder to blow the whistle.

It was a sad, and premature, end to Wragg’s promising career. I don’t know Wragg, and I share few of his “Common Sense Group” values. He backed a hard Brexit, and in November 2020 he was a signatory to a silly letter to the Telegraph accusing the National Trust of being “coloured by cultural Marxist dogma”. But he is clearly bright, becoming chairman of the influential Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Select Committee in January 2020, after only four years in parliament (his predecessor as the committee’s chair, Bernard Jenkin, is a veteran MP of the 1992 intake). Wragg has always seemed mature beyond his years, well-spoken and looking more like a Tory MP of the 1950s than a Millennial born in 1987.

Wragg had also shown rare courage as a backbencher: in January 2022 he called for Prime Minister Boris Johnson to resign over the Westminster lockdown parties controversy, confirmed he had submitted a letter of no confidence in Johnson, and even accused Tory whips of blackmailing MPs who were believed to support ousting Johnson. In an extraordinary press conference, Wragg alleged that MPs had been told they could face loss of public investment in their constituencies, and the release of embarrassing stories about them. This was not Wragg jumping on a bandwagon as Johnson was already on his way out of Number Ten: in the end Johnson did not resign until September 2022, eight months after Wragg’s bombshell.

No-one has really appreciated, either then or since, quite how explosive Wragg’s allegations were, and it is worth quoting them in detail. “It is, of course, the duty of the Government whip’s office to secure the Government’s business in the House of Commons”, said Wragg. “However, it is not their function to breach the ministerial code in threatening to withdraw investments for Members of Parliaments’ constituencies which are funded from the public purse. Additionally, reports to me and others of members of staff at No 10 Downing Street, special advisers, Government ministers and others, encouraging the publication of stories in the press seeking to embarrass those who they suspect of lacking confidence in the Prime Minister is similarly unacceptable. The intimidation of a Member of Parliament is a serious matter. Moreover, the reports of which I’m aware would seem to constitute blackmail. As such, it would be my general advice to colleagues to report these matters to the Speaker of the House of Commons and the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, and they’re also welcome to contact me at any time.”

Is it just coincidence that an MP who called out blackmail by the whips in early 2022 was then found to be the victim of blackmail by sexual partners in 2024?

Few of the media commentators who pilloried Wragg and Menzies are homophobes, but they seem to have a quaint view of sexual politics. They may be familiar with Manchester’s Gay Village, but they are less familiar with the rest of the north-west, and they seemed surprised that either of these MPs might be worried about blackmail, or being outed (while Wragg had been open about being gay, Menzies had been less open, and in2014 he had denied allegations that he had paid a Brazilian male escort for sex and asked him to supply mephedrone, a Class B drug). Many voices have said that neither should ever stand again for parliament, as Wragg is guilty of a breach of trust and Menzies is guilty of misuse of party funds – or worse. They assume that Wragg had no grounds for wanting to prevent the dissemination of intimate photos, and that Menzies was either lying about being held captive by “some bad people”, or had only himself o blame for his predicament.

The problem with the charge against Wragg is that “sextortion” is common enough against heterosexual men and women. When employed against gay people, who still face stigma and prejudice (particularly in the Tory party) it has added force. Was Wragg wrong to pass on the phone numbers of other Tory MPs to his blackmailers? Undoubtedly, yes. But he was deserving of sympathy, not slander. Let him without sin cast the first stone.

All British political parties support Pride, and – aside from the vexed question of Trans rights – they share a consensus that bigotry and homophobia have no place in parliament. They insist they are safe spaces for LGBT people. Despite all the departures, there may still be a net increase in LGBT MPs at this election: I certainly hope so. But many of the new crop of LGBT MPs will eye the fate of two of their predecessors in the 2019-2024 parliament, Mark Menzies and William Wragg, with trepidation.