Sometime after David Cameron's election as leader of the Conservative Party in Britain he began to make positive noises about the importance of the family - and of marriage as the institution which gave it stability in society. When the Tories won enough votes in the last general election to enable them to form a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats some thought things might improve.
The people to whom these things really matter were very hopeful that at last something might be done about the slippery slope on which they perceived both institutions were rapidly sliding into deep trouble. But not Peter Hitchens, London Daily Mail columnist and brother of the late-lamented Christopher. Hitchens says he saw through the real David Cameron from the word go. He pulls no punches in his reading of Mr. Cameron on the same-sex marriage issue.
Hitchens, whose pet name for the British PM is "Mr. Slippery", in his column this weekend tells us a little smugly that "Hardly a day passes without someone ringing me up or writing to me to say that they now realise that our Prime Minister, Mr Slippery, is a fraud." Many tell him that they are now sorry they are that they refused to believe him when he told them this, over and over again, before the last Election.
"Well, as the Scottish pastor said to his wayward flock as they called up to him from the flames of Hell 'We didn't know!'" Hitchens replies 'You know now'.
Citing u-turns by Mr. Carmeon on other issues, he has no sympathy for his correspondents. The evidence was there and they should have known.
"But people would keep telling me", Hitchens complains, "that he somehow 'really means it' about his (rather feeble) scheme to recognise marriage in the tax system. They seem to have thought that one day he would rip off his suit and reveal himself to be 'SuperTory'.
"Well, as for marriage, he now claims to be much more concerned about helping a few hundred homosexuals get married than about helping millions of heterosexuals to stay married."
As far as Hitchens is concerned, Mr. Cameron doesn't care tuppence for homosexuals and he is just playing to a gallery which he thinks is important because it makes him look more "with-it". "This is, in fact, a wind-up. I shouldn't think Mr Slippery cares even slightly about homosexuals, and I wonder what he used to say about them in private before he learned how to be cool."
But he knows that driving homosexual marriage through Parliament will enrage the suburban voters he despises. He longs to be assailed by them, because it will make him look good among the Guardian-reading metropolitans he wants to win over.