In a first for central Government, the Cabinet Office is flying a rainbow flag to mark World Pride being held this weekend in London.
The iconic flag has been flown on the personal request of Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg. Officials say that Mr Clegg thought it ‘was about time for Whitehall to bring itself up to date’ by flying the flag in solidarity with the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered) community.
Liberal Democrat Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said: “There has to be a first time for everything – flying this iconic flag in the heart of Whitehall is a small but important emblem that the Government and this country are behind equal rights.
“I’m absolutely delighted that, with a little bit of persuasion and determination, we’ve been able to fly the rainbow flag for this weekend’s festivities. I hope this is the start of a new era of pride across the historic Whitehall village.”
Designed in San Francisco in 1978 by Gilbert Baker, the original flag had eight stripes instead of today’s six horizontal stripes of red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet.
Mr Clegg recently became the most senior politician to join the Out4Marriage campaign for marriage equality and yesterday said that churches and other religious institutions should be allowed perform same-sex marriages.
Subscribe
-
Follow @libdemvoice.org on Bluesky
-
Like us on Facebook
-
Subscribe to our feed
-
Sign-up for our daily email digest
Most Read
Search
Op-eds
-
Defining our future in Burnham Britain (Gareth McAleer)
-
Andy Burnham – new messiah or naughty boy? (Mark Hunter)
-
“Palestine should be run by Palestinians” so why won’t Britain reckon with what it did? (Alex Cole-Hamilton)
-
You can’t defend your way to a World Cup… or No. 10 (Tom Reeve)
-
The financing timebomb in Sub-Saharan Africa: What Britain should do — and isn’t (Rupinder Singh)
-
Lloyd George Society Chair - Welsh Lib Dem Peers face extinction
-
Saving the curlew from extinction in Shropshire
-
The cinema in a church that became a curry house
-
Tackling flooding in Sunniside
-
The coronation of King Andy
-
Congratulations Dave
-
East Midlands Railway cancels 20 fast services a day because of problems with its new trains
-
Latest voting intention and leadership ratings opinion polls
-
Big cat found in plant pot after two-month search
-
Lib Dems continue to win in key areas for next general election
Recent Comments
Howard Sykes
Mark is spot on with his assessment, as some one who also had meetings with him as Mayor with Mark on behalf of all the LD Cllrs in GM. I am more circumspect a...
Alex B
Er. Has Andy mentioned his approach to the EU at all? Or doesn't that go down well in the Brexit Reform voting subworld? Hope we get a good minister handling ne...
Peter Chambers
A short article on the Today programme this week said that in the UK employers were tending to use the GPT-LLM technology to lower costs, for example by sacking...
Robin Stafford
Those ‘fortresses’ in the South look more like a Maginot line, heavily reliant on a soft Tory tactical vote. Most of the country gets ignored whilst Greens ...
John Kelly
Very good article Alex. Sorry to see @simonmcgrath downplaying the appalling behaviour of the British during 1936-9. This is well captured in the Award winn...


6 Comments
Very glad to see this. It’s symbolic, while the real work is proceeding with equal marriage, international LGBT+ rights etc. across Lib Dem departments – but there’s nothing wrong with the outside of Whitehall reflecting what we’re doing on the inside in Government.
Symbolism, maybe, important definitely . It shows those on government benches who will oppose the current measures that it really is how not if with equality in the 21st century…
Religious groups should be allowed to perform same sex marriages. They should not be legally forced to do so.
Stephen W, that’s exactly the Lib Dem position on this issue.
Good on you nick. retweeted flag this morning.
Heavens, a LDV post with purely positively comments… and I add mine too: well done, Nick; we can be proud of the progress the Coalition is making in this area 🙂