The big news story today is that Theresa May has managed to
agree a deal with the Democratic Unionist Party, whereby their ten MPs will
allow her to remain as Prime Minister.
Basically, the government has promised an extra billion pounds in public
spending in Northern Ireland in return for the support of the DUP. While most opposition parties have condemned
this arrangement, I wonder if some of them are not perhaps jealous that they
have not just persuaded the government to promise some extra public spending.
In a sense, this deal is rather an anticlimax. When it was first reported that Theresa May
was discussing with the DUP, criticism tended to focus on the DUP’s reputation
for being tub-thumping Christians, and yet so far as I am aware their deal with
the government does not so much as hint at any of the things we were supposed
to be worried about.
a related item
of news is that Tim Farron recently resigned as leader of the Liberal
Democrats, and cited his Christian values as a reason for his departure. This
has drawn a lot of press coverage, with several comment writers arguing that he
was effectively driven out of the leadership by people who objected to his
being a Christian.
I remember when Tim Farron became party leader back in
2015. He was interviewed on television
about his Christian beliefs, and seemed rather uncomfortable about some of the
questions. Quite simply, this was not
something I had ever seen before. Many
prominent MPs over the years have claimed to be Christians, and yet I have
never seen any one of them questioned in the way Tim Farron was – and neither
was this an isolated incident. Since
then he has endured quite a few interviews where he was asked probing questions
about his religious views.
On top of this, Farron has not enjoyed anything like as much
support from his party as he could reasonably have hoped for, and it is hard to
avoid the conclusion that at least some people in his party were trying to
force him out. Farron became leader when the party had just eight MPs, and it is easy to
imagine party activists hoping to gain seats at the next
general election, so as to allow a new leadership election with a wider choice.
As it turns out, the party now has eleven MPs, including two
MPs who have recently returned to the Commons after losing their seats at the
2015 general election. Both are
currently being taken seriously as potential replacement leaders.
As for Tim Farron, he could always quit the Liberal Democrats,
but doing so would almost certainly spell
the end of his parliamentary career. He
could try launching a new political party, but I would not expect such a party
to exist for long.
One of the many problems faced by supposedly Christian
politicians is the almost complete lack of effective support from most if not
all of Britain’s church leaders. I would
have great admiration for Britain’s church leaders if they would say publicly
that people should not vote for mainstream political parties. Doing so might give the mainstream political
parties an impetus to start taking Christians more seriously – but I don’t expect it ever to happen.
No comments:
Post a Comment