Dear Harry

No wonder the Anglican Church is dying when its ministers back the party led by an atheist which opposes church schools.

I guess that believing in God is not a strong factor in who you vote for?

Thank you for your comment on my blog...and specially for doing that I'm not only going to respond in the comments you're going to get a blog entry just for you.

You see it's too easy to say what you have, it requires virtually no thought and it just drives a horse and cart through any kind of complex argument. If you're a Christian you have to vote for Christians. OK now go back and read what I actually said.

Let's get things straight. At this election there were three leaders of three main parties. Mr Brown is a Christian but actually hardly ever speaks about his faith. Mr Clegg is an atheist and Mr Cameron once described his faith as "a bit like the reception for Magic FM in the Chilterns: it sort of comes and goes". So you see there wasn't much to choose from there. None of them stood up and said vote for me and I will promote the agenda of God. They are all basically modern secularist politicians, who essentially want faith the be a private matter. In fact Nick Clegg is to be commended for his honesty. At least he admits he has no place for God in his thinking.

But of course unless you live in Witney, Sheffield or Kirkcaldy you didn't actually vote for these people. In my constituency God was not mentioned in any campaign literature. I have no idea what the winning candidate's beliefs are and I'm not going to speculate on them here. I knew the Liberal Democrat candidate but actually her personal religious opinions never got mentioned in any of the conversations we had, I didn't ask since I tend to find people are a lot more open to the things of God if you don't shove them down their throats. I'm not ashamed of the Gospel it is precisely because it is the power of salvation that you don't need to force it into people's lives.

I have no idea what the UKIP candidate believed or the Labour candidate.

So rather than deciding who you would vote for based on how close their Sunday attendance was to yours. Actually you could do what I do and sit down and think it through carefully. You see no where in over 4 gospels did Jesus ever say vote for...

Quite the opposite he did tend to have opinions like 'render to Caesar'.

It is, I am afraid, slightly more complicated. There are a whole range of Christian opinions and we have to look at them alongside the mainstream party's. You see for some people it's all about the family for them you need to vote for the Party that will defend marriage. They often vote for the right. Interestingly enough there are a least a couple of occasions in the Bible in which Jesus seems to give family quite a low priority. (Luke 8: 19-21)

For some people it is about taking care of the poor and needy. Something the Lord seemed never to shut up about. Those people often vote with the left.

Since there isn't really a Christian party and even if there was actually there are so many different ideas just within the Church that actually it's not actually possible for us to put a coherent manifesto together that actually represents 100% of Christian ideas.

And as to the Church dying, well Harry I hate to point out the complexities of the situation but actually there are a whole bunch of reasons why the Church has declined for the last couple of centuries. One of course is the industrialisation of Britain in the 19th century. With it's rapid relocation of the proletariat, and the severing of their lives from the local church. It is about the growth of post modernism.

And of course one of the biggest reason for the loss of faith is that right from the 19th century on, secularists have viewed themselves as morally superior to Christians. Which of course is something we are doing everything in our power to confirm. An awful lot of people who aren't Christians now view Christians as a bit like them only more murderously hating of homosexuals.

But lets be honest here Harry, out of all the people you could pick in England and point to as an example of a dying Church, I'm probably the worst.

After all I was supposed to be made redundant...and I'm still here mostly because 1,000 students wanted me. We're not in decline here.

So you see it's a bit more complicated.

OH CRAP!

This could change everything.



Thank goodness my parliament is made of Duplo.

Building the Future

I have been left of centre for a while. I lived through the last recession as an unemployed man and I as such, I was able to listen to Peter Lilly blame the unemployed for being unemployed and declare that the 'something for nothing society is coming to an end'.

In the last two recessions the policy of letting the markets sort it out was brutal with unemployment rising massively even after the recession was over. This time it has not been so. Maybe just maybe that is something to do with having a slightly more caring government at the helm. I don't relish the thought of the man who assisted Norman Lamont then, moving into Downing Street now.

Many people want to see progressive government. This includes many Labour and Liberal Democrats. Indeed in this part of the world for both those groups the Tory's are the common enemy. So it is natural for them to seek some sort of Lib-Lab coalition. Or to sit in opposition.

But as I sat in the Stag's Head on election night two things struck me. The Politics society had issued everyone with a sticker on the way in in their chosen party colours. I noticed how there were hardly any red stickers in the room...but there weren't many blue either. There was a whole bunch of yellow. It was a fact that the student vote this time seemed to have gone Lib Dem. The second thing I noticed was the look of horror that crossed one of the Tory voting students face as he listened to the news that his party had not only come fourth in Scotland, it's share of the vote had actually gone down.

I worry about a minority conservative government. Because it will disenfranchise too many people. Not just the students with yellow badges. The blue party has not sufficiently broadened it's appeal. There are still swaths of the North of England, Scotland and Wales, a lot of inner cities, and minority groups who still do not feel David Cameron represents them. And if he does a deal with the DUP and thus protects that part of the UK from cuts he will further damage the Union.

But while there are many areas in which the Conservatives do not have a mandate, in some they do: In defence in, dealing with immigration, with regards to the EU and the Euro, in poll after poll, the Conservatives came top. We live in a democracy so I accept that (with, of course, my palm clasped repeatedly to my own forehead). And while there is growing support for electoral reform, at the moment those wishing for PR, are far from the majority. And finally, the conservative are far and away the biggest party in England.

We are in difficult times as a country. I rainbow progressive coalition would be weak and, missing out the largest party, would lack an obvious mandate. We need a strong Government. However the Conservative Party should not make the mistake of thinking strong government is synonymous with a Government that implements their policies. You cannot completely implement that which only 37% of the voters agreed with. But a genuine compromise backed by nearly 70% of voters could lead to a new beginning.

Which is why I want the Liberal Democrats to put Mr Cameron into Downing Street. And I want Mr Cameron to compromise as much as is necessary.

I know first hand how difficult this will be for local Lib-Dems. After all we have just lost one of the finest MPs on the South Coast, which is painful. It took me nearly a year to get over loosing my nan, it took me 6 months to get over my first broken heart but I don't think I'll ever get over loosing Sandra Gidley as my MP.

But we have to do this. Because if we don't, if we refuse to be in Government, or if we form a coalition of the loosers then we will with give the electorate no choice but to give Mr Cameron a landslide victory.

And this is about the future. I voted for the future on Thursday. There is no doubt in my mind that it will be better if it is built on some Lib-Dem policies.

Come on...

What does he owe to whom?

Once upon a time, roughly in the 80s there were two strains of thought in British and American political thought. One, the left said there needed to be redistribution of wealth. The other, the right, argued that you couldn't have that. It was too expensive and it ruined the economy. The cited the 70s as evidence of that on both sides of the Atlantic.

So it was all well and good to want to help the poor but sadly you were going to have to sit back and let the markets take care of it. Of course there would be some trickle down wealth but basically the markets would just be left to their own devices.

The only trouble was the voters began to feel guilty about the fact that those at the bottom kept getting screwed.

Then along came the 90s and the left, in the shape of Bill Clinton, tried a new tactic. We could look after the vulnerable and needy and have a decent economy. This idea proved very popular and was instantly stolen by the Labour Party. Result? Landslide victories and only nasty rich people prepared to vote Tory!

In The US the Right pondered this for a while. Clearly the Left had won the argument about taking care of people how could they respond? Then they spotted something, there was one group of right wingers who seemed to want to help those in need. Christians. And there were a lot of them in America. Particularly Protestants, they believed in people being allowed to change and helping them to do it. This came together with Right Wing fiscal policy and created compassionate conservatism. Now the state could draw back from looking after people, thus saving valuable tax dollars, but instead of the markets taking care of it, someone else now would, Churches and other voluntary organisations. After all, reasoned Bush, they were better at it anyway. It didn't matter that mostly they weren't actually so bothered about helping people as converting them or that this violated the first amendment. He did it and it won him two elections.

So I found a little story on Iain Dale's blog. This notes that apparently one of the Conservative candidates, Philippa Stroud, has. in the past, offered deliverance ministry to homosexual men and women, in order for God to change them. She was offered the chance to refute the allegations and instead simply said she didn't believe that homosexuality was an illness. Which, obviously, if it is as a result of demon possession, it can't be an illness.

Now Iain does he best to defend her, stating he is happy Christians to pray for him as a gay man because they pray for lots of people. Iain, do bear in mind, when I pray for ill people it's because they have something wrong with them.

Frankly I would be astonished if the wife of a New Frontiers Church had views other than those she is accused of, so would the Church.

But leave that on one side...the point here is that according to the Observer she is credited with formulating over 70 of the party's policy. This is a fully paid up member of the Christian Right, which apparently have very little influence over policy in the UK, right at the centre of the Tory plans for the election. And what do we find in their manifesto? A solid commitment to something called the Big Society. An idea in which the state draws back from various activities to allow the voluntary sector to step in. Organisations... like Churches.

All of this means that David Cameron owes much more to George W. Bush than he is letting on.

Sometimes change is new....sometimes it's just different.