It’s Pride weekend in Britain, and one Conservative MP used the occasion to shine a little bit of rainbow brightness into the gray days after the Brexit referendum.
Justine Greening, the MP for Putney in southwest London who serves in David Cameron’s Cabinet as Secretary of State for International Development, came out in rather a clever tweet.
The reception from other senior Conservative politicians was impressively warm, with luminaries including Cameron, openly gay MP Crispin Blunt, and Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson, an out lesbian, tweeting their support. Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne declared it the “[b]est news in last 48 hours!”
As Barbara Speed reported just after the May 2015 general election, the U.K. Parliament has more openly queer legislators than any other country’s. Back then, 31 of the 650 MPs were openly gay, lesbian, or bisexual—including a whopping 12.5 percent of the Scottish National Party delegation. Now there’s at least one more.
