‘I was the only out lesbian MP for 13 years – here’s how Parliament has changed’

When Dame Angela Eagle decided it was time to come out publicly as gay, there were two people she knew she needed to tell first.

That wasn’t simply out of courtesy. It was because the year was 1997, and the reaction to the news from the media had the potential to be explosive.

A general election had just resulted in a landslide victory for Tony Blair. Eagle – a Labour MP since 1992, covering the final stretch of Conservative power that lasted 18 years – became a junior environment minister.

The landscape for LGBTQ+ Brits was tough, typified by the Section 28 law against ‘promoting homosexuality’ and the devastation of the Aids epidemic. Caustic homophobia was common in the media and broader culture.

Making things harder still, there wasn’t much precedent for a gay politician. There had been only two openly gay MPs before, Maureen Colquhoun and Chris Smith – and only the latter had come out publicly by choice.

Smith, who became the new Culture Secretary under Blair, was the first of the two people Eagle decided to tell. She needed advice.

‘It took me ages to get a cabinet minister to go out for a meal with me in the evening, where I could talk to him about how he did it and what I should be doing,’ she told Metro.

‘We knew each other well, and we were having a nice time in this restaurant, and we got all the way through to past the sweet, and I’m thinking, “How do I, how do I just…”

‘In the end, I was thinking, “Angela, it’s taken months for you to get this bloody meeting to ask him his advice, and now here we are, we’re nearly at the end of the meal, and you still haven’t.”

‘So in the end, I just said it, and he was gobsmacked and pleased and happy to help and talk and things like that.’

It took less time for Eagle to tell the second person: her boss, Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott.

‘I got 15 minutes, and I told him, and he said, “Tell me something I didn’t know already, love.”

‘And he said, “Can I give you a hug?” And I said, “Yes,” and he gave me a hug.’

After a final chat with New Labour supremo Peter Mandelson, she gave an exclusive interview to Suzanne Moore of the Independent (‘I didn’t want to do it in the Guardian, because I thought they were all a load of public school blokes’, she said) and that was that.

Eagle returned to her Wallasey constituency in Merseyside for publication day, so she handle things with her local party. After all the anxiety, their reaction was ‘very positive’.

‘They did a vox pop [series of interviews with the general public], the local media, and they couldn’t find anyone that criticised me. So when they said that, that’s when I burst into tears,’ she said.

Astonishingly, Eagle spent the next 13 years – Labour’s entire period in power – as the only ‘out’ lesbian in the House of Commons.

Over that time, she picks out her role in proceedings for the civil partnership bill, her support for gay adoption, and her opposition to the watering-down of anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination laws in Northern Ireland as proud moments in Parliament.

It’s now thankfully hard to imagine a gay MP having to seek the advice of Deputy PM Angela Rayner before coming out, for fear of backlash.

In fact, Labour’s 59 openly LGBTQ+ MPs make up ‘by far the largest party cohort of any parliament, anywhere in the world’, according to PinkNews.

Her current role, as minister for border security and asylum, puts her in touch with some of the most vulnerable LGBTQ+ people on the planet, asylum seekers fleeing persecution for their sexuality.

Eagle said: ‘I just think it’s much better that everybody feels that they can be out now. And so that is part of a change that I’m glad to played a part in.’

She added: ‘I think people are well aware, given some backtracking particularly on trans rights in a lot of democracies, that there is a backlash going on about equality issues and LGBT rights, and we’ve got to make sure that we are there to carry on the fight.’

Metro‘s interview with Eagle took place before the Supreme Court’s ruling on the application of the Equality Act for trans men and women. She declined to comment when contacted afterwards, due to her role as a government minister.

Last year, Metro revealed a gay man from Bangladesh had his UK asylum application refused after a judge told him he was only ‘trying to pass’ himself as gay.

Asked about that story, Eagle said: ‘It’s very, very difficult to assert something that often you’ve had to hide.

‘We just have to hope that caseworkers know the right way to approach these sensitive issues, and there isn’t a cliched view and that they can make a sophisticated decision that everybody wants to support.

‘I can’t involve myself in individual cases, because we can’t as ministers, but we’ve got to make certain that there’s an understanding of what the issues are in some places where you really can’t be gay acting, because you’d be killed.’

For the last three years of the previous Parliament, Eagle sat as co-chair on the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Global LGBT+ Rights.

Her experience there meant she knows ‘very well’ the struggles people face around the world, she said, adding: ‘So I don’t ever take progress for granted. We have to keep winning the arguments.’

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