Some time ago I got a phone call from the Liberal Democrat MP & International Development Minister, Lynne Featherstone. Would I be the guest speaker at a fundraising dinner she was organising. ‘What’s it for?’ I asked. ‘My re-election campaign war chest’, she replied. Gulp.

Although I am no longer active politically and not a member of a political party, this presented me with something of a moral dilemma. I don’t pretend that my political views don’t remain firmly on the right of centre, with the odd bit of social liberal leftiness thrown in for good measure but presenting a daily radio show on LBC means that I deliberately stay away from any sort of party political endorsement.

Furthermore, wouldn’t it be betraying my old friends and colleagues in the Conservative Party? The very people who had supported me through thick and thin when I was fighting a LibDem MP in a marginal seat in the 2005 election. A real dilemma.

Except in the end it wasn’t. I count Lynne Featherstone as a friend, and you do things like this for friends, don’t you? You wouldn’t be much of one if you didn’t. But apart from the there is another major reason why I would have felt a complete heel if I had said no to Lynne.

Enoch Powell – and I reckon this is the first time he’s ever been mentioned in this esteemed organ – once said that ‘all political careers end in failure’. Well unless she is forced to resign because she is found in bed with the entire Arsenal reserve team, I reckon it is safe to say that when Lynne goes to meet her political maker, she will be able to look back and think, ‘not bad, not bad’.

Her crowning political achievement will have been to be the driving force behind the equal marriage legislation. By the time it was enacted she had been reshuffled from her job in the Home Office to the Department for International Development, but everyone knew that without her it probably wouldn’t have happened. She is living proof that politicians can change things if they have the drive, initiative and persistence.

On only her second day in office, back in May 2010, she attended a meeting of junior ministers where they were told if they had any ideas for doing anything major, they needed to get their ideas in early. She immediately latched onto the idea of introducing same-sex marriage. I suspect even she hadn’t counted for the very vocal opposition she would have to encounter, and I know there were times she thought that it would never see the light of day. But when you have the Home Secretary, Deputy Prime Minister and Prime Minister on your side, you stand a good chance of pulling through.

I remember getting a call from someone in Number Ten at a crucial point in the passage of the bill, wanting to make very clear that this bill was going through only because the prime minister was giving it is personal backing and endorsement. The subliminal message was that they thought Lynne Featherstone was claiming too much of the credit. It’s certainly true that few bills ever go through unless the PM backs them, and on this issue he has form, having backed gay marriage as far back as his first party conference speech as leader in 2006.
But in the end, same-sex marriage will be associated with Lynne Featherstone in the same way that we associate David Steel with the 1967 Abortion Act and Roy Jenkins with the legalisation of homosexuality.

No wonder that in 2012 Lynne was awarded Attitude’s Politician of the Year Award.

Since then she has led the campaign to banish female genital mutilation from this country. At the Home Office she persuaded the Home Secretary to launch a very public campaign against this barbaric practice and talked about it in a way that made the media cover it. Believe me, hosting a radio phone-in on a subject like that isn’t an easy thing to persuade your editor to allow you to do.

So for all those reasons, in mid November, I will be trying to persuade a roomful of monied LibDems to part with it on behalf of Lynne Featherstone – a woman who can truly say she’s changed the world. For us.

This article first appeared in the current issue of Attitude Magazine