A Battle Worth Fighting?
Updated: 11:30pm UK, Tuesday 05 February 2013
By Jon Craig, Chief Political Correspondent
After gay marriage was backed by MPs with a thumping majority of 225, Tory MPs for and against it both hailed the result as a victory.
Those Conservatives who support the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill claimed they were delighted by the margin in favour, 400 votes to 175.
But opponents claimed victory because more Conservative MPs voted against the bill than in favour, 136 to 126, with 41 abstentions.
So who has cause to celebrate?
Those supporters of the bill to whom I spoke after the vote - including Margot James, Mike Freer and Nick Herbert - claim the big majority in favour means the bill is well on course to becoming law, because the size of the majority will send a powerful signal to the House of Lords.
But opponents - including Tim Loughton, Sir Gerald Howarth and David Burrowes - told me the fight is only just beginning and will now move to the committee stage in the Commons and then the Lords, where the bishops will join the opposition.
Despite loyalists insisting this was a free vote, a conscience vote and therefore neither a rebellion nor a threat to David Cameron's authority, the deep split among Conservative MPs is a personal humiliation for the Prime Minister.
Only an hour or so before the vote, he made an 11th-hour TV appeal to wavering Tory MPs. But it flopped badly. I don't know if it was just a coincidence, but until the PM appeared on TV most of the speeches from the Tory back benches I heard seemed to be in support of the bill. Afterwards, they all seemed to be pretty hostile.
The arithmetic shows that 47 out of 119 members of the so-called payroll Vote (that's ministers and Parliamentary Private Secretaries) failed to support the Prime Minister in the Aye lobby (about 40%).
Among his backbenchers 129 out of 184 (about 70%) failed to support him.
Owen Paterson was the only Cabinet minister to vote against the bill, though Philip Hammond made himself scarce and - oddly - Attorney General Dominic Grieve didn't vote either, despite sitting in the Commons chamber for large parts of the debate.
But several middle ranking and junior ministers defied the PM and voted against, including Michael Fallon, John Hayes, Greg Knight, David Lidington, Esther McVey, Mike Penning, John Randall and Andrew Robathan.
Also voting against were grandees Sir Malcolm Rifkind and Liam Fox, 1922 Committee chairman Graham Brady, serial rebel David Davis and the darling of the tearoom plotters, Adam Afriyie.
Of the 20 or so Labour MPs voting against the bill, the vast majority were Roman Catholics and the four Lib Dems voting against included Methodist lay preacher Sir Alan Beith.
During the debate, Sir Gerald Howarth - sacked from his job as a defence minister last September - proudly declared: "I am not a moderniser!"
When I interviewed him later he proudly described himself as "a traditionalist".
And that sums up the split: Modernisers v Traditionalists.
They can't both win this battle. And if Mr Cameron does win it, it may be at a heavy price: Tory voters and activists deserting him and defecting into the welcoming arms of UKIP and more dissent, mutiny and plotting among his malcontent MPs.
He insists it's a price worth paying because backing gay marriage is the right thing to do.
But many of his MPs - whether supporters or opponents of gay marriage - question his judgement and wonder whether it is a battle worth fighting.
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