Somewhere in my distant memory I recall how about 20 years ago an agitated young man in the audience of TV politics show asked Oona King, then the Labour MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, the vexing question of when her party would hurry up and get around to abolishing marriage. She appeared surprised but treated him courteously, explaining that New Labour had no plans to abolish marriage because it was very popular with the British electorate.
The task of abolishing marriage was left therefore to the next lot of neo-Marxist revolutionaries, the coalition government of David Cameron, a decade later. They relied on the support of Labour to push though the 2013 Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act. They did so without a manifesto pledge and against the wishes of the parliamentary Conservative Party and the rank and file members in the shires, who left in droves, attracted back by the offer only of a referendum on membership of the European Union, a gamble which backfired spectacularly for Cameron and his cronies.
