Should I seriously think about voting Tory at the next election? Short answer: no. Or, at any rate, I won't, whether or not I should.
Longer answer. This is what Tom Chivers is suggesting that lefty-liberal types should do. Why? Because... '[t]he leadership of the Conservative Party has done something remarkable: it has gone further than any Labour government has gone, and pushed for the full enactment of gay marriage'; for lefty-liberals that is a good thing; and 'if the Conservative Party isn't rewarded for making positive moves, it will have no incentive to make them in future'.
The problem with the suggestion is that it treats voting as if it were primarily a way of trying to influence political parties that you like less to behave in ways that will make you like them more; rather than an activity based on all-round assessment of which party of those on offer you would prefer to see in government.
It's not that Tom fails to note this other sort of consideration. He allows that the rewarding-good-behaviour impulse 'needs to be weighed against the things that you don't like [about the Tories]'. But he seems not to see how that wrecks his suggestion.
Go back to my short answer in the first paragraph.
