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The Prime Minister does God

Nigel Williams, 17 April 2014

Today is Maundy Thursday. The Queen is visiting Blackburn Cathedral to distribute money to deserving pensioners. More unexpectedly, the Prime Minister has written a column for the Church Times. It’s not the highest circulation newspaper in Westminster, although it has won an award for its cartoons, featuring the artists Dave Walker and Ron, and since the demise of the Guardian’s Rev John Graham, its crossword compilers have borne comparison with any newspaper.

Foodbanks

The article admits to ‘welcome the efforts of all those who help to feed, clothe, and house the poorest in our society’. This will gratify the supporters of, among others, the Trussell Trust, whose foodbanks gave three days’ supply to 913,138 people in the year to March. Even if some of those people have returned several times, it is still a startling statistic, and 15 times that of only three years earlier. Benefit delays and changes together account for 38% (440,000) but a further 28% (260,000) come because of low pay and debt. How far the trust’s 30,000 volunteers would agree with the Prime Minister’s confidence in ‘the reforms to welfare that make work pay’ would make an interesting survey.

Pastoral Care

Of course Mr Cameron is working with finite resources to satisfy immense demands. Despite a lot of criticism, his coalition is still keeping to the 0.7% foreign development target, and the article takes pride that ‘every few seconds a child is being vaccinated’ as a result. There is a parallel with Gordon Brown, whose domestic decisions on pensions earnt opposition whereas his support for Jubilee 2000 and international debt relief eased a lot of suffering worldwide. There is another parallel too. ‘I have felt at first hand the healing power of the Church’s pastoral care’ says Mr Cameron, in a poignant reminder that he, like his predecessor, has had to endure family tragedy in public. Only a small minority of the electorate can properly understand that.

BBC Balance?

For the BBC, the article was a cue to interview a spokesman for the National Secular Society. They got Evan Harris, one of very few sitting Liberal Democrats to lose their seats in 2010, despite being well down the vulnerable list. . The number may be larger in 2015. The NSS is also a minority organisation. It does not release membership numbers. Even their annual turnover, composed of members’ subscriptions, has become hard to trace but they have 15,500 Twitter followers, almost enough to send one to every parish church in England. Nevertheless, the BBC chooses to invite Dr Harris to comment on one of the holiest days of the Christian calendar in a bizarre interpretation of editorial balance. Plenty of chocolatiers, florists or DIY enthusiasts could speak for the majority if the BBC were worried about religious overload. Meanwhile Radio 4 comedy provides frequent support for Christianity’s opponents. At least the late Linda Smith was funny. Her comment ‘I’m not religious, I tend to get on with most people’ remains a salutary life-lesson whatever one’s point of view.

1 comment on “The Prime Minister does God”

  1. Another graphic example of how divorced from the lives of the British public Cameron and his ilk are.

    To be a religious believer in Britain is to be a member of a small minority of Britons even if faiths other than Christianity are included. To be Christian is to be part of an even smaller minority. To be an Anglican is to be part of a very small and rapidly vanishing group.

    But that is not will enrage the British public about the article. What will enrage them is NuTory Boy’s boasting about spending around £11 billion pounds of their money in Aid last year when spending on vital public projects such as the NHS has been frozen or reduced (Homecare) or simply not provided (the repair of potholes).

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