Hughes dismisses gay rumours

Liberal Democrat leadership frontrunner Simon Hughes has denied suggestions that he is gay.

The party president and new bookmakers' favourite for the role was asked in an interview in the Independent newspaper on Monday whether rumours surrounding his sexuality were true.

He dismissed the claims, but suggested that the country is ready for a gay party leader or premier.

"No, I'm not," he said. "But it absolutely should not matter if I was.

"If I was, and if people were to judge me on that, I would ask them to think again.

"There is no reason why you shouldn't have a gay leader of a party, or even a gay prime minister. I don't think this is an issue."

Hughes has faced the rumours since he won his North Southwark and Bermondsey seat in a bitter by-election campaign in 1983.

The 54-year-old is still single. He said he had thought about getting married "often", but that MPs were entitled to a private life.

"I take the same view as David Cameron and other sensible people that there is a line to be drawn," he said.

"I know my colleagues agree. They respect the fact that we should have some privacy."

'Left-wing'

Hughes has already overtaken acting leader Sir Menzies Campbell as the favourite to replace Charles Kennedy since his campaign launch last week.

However he is battling to counter suggestions that he would be a left-wing leader who would raise taxes. "It's not fair and it's not right," he said.

"And if people look at what I have said and done over the years, they will see that I was pushing issues, for instance on the environment, before they entered the mainstream of political debate.

"I was out there physically campaigning against the Winchester by-pass. Very few other MPs were there."

"I come from the good sound Liberal tradition, the Lloyd George tradition, and I'm proud of it, but when I came to a decision to live and work in the inner city, it was primarily to take on the corporatist attitudes of the Labour left," he added.

"As a liberal, I'm against excessive regulation. I've argued strongly for handing power away from the centre and giving local communities more freedom to run their schools, to hold police more accountable to their communities, to put the health service under more local control.

"Tax is something you have to have in order to raise the money to do what you want to do. You have to raise what you need, but you shouldn't have the luxury of raising more than is necessary."