Thank God for Brexit?

I was given an opportunity to speak in a pub last week on whether there is a distinctively Christian approach to politics. This is what I said:

The title of this talk is 'Thank God for Brexit - question mark'. I emphasise that because it is a question not a statement.

The identity of the speaker is 'author and broadcaster'. I hover around the fringes of BBC Radio Bristol where I have done 150 Thoughts for the Day and have written some books, articles and broadcast pieces. But my day job is as a Church of England vicar and I wouldn't want to misrepresent that. I am a member of what national radio prefers to call generally - the faith community.

I am a Christian. I believe in God although I understand that as a more complex statement than it sounds. I believe, as the Bible describes, that God is beyond our comprehension yet in the person of Jesus Christ is uniquely revealed. Said St Paul (I paraphrase) as he wrote to the Colossians, 'If you want to know what God is like look at Jesus.'

So my question for us all is this - is there a faith position, in my case a Christian faith position, on matters of national political purpose?

And at this point I need to tell you how I feel about national political purpose. I'm going to try and avoid telling you how I will vote at the next election. Conveniently that is because I don't currently know.

Political debate over the last few years has been like watching two people discuss a snooker ball. Politician A brandishes the ball and says 'It's red'. Politician B shakes a head and says 'No it's not - it's round'.

And the problem with that, if you need it spelling out, is not either of the statements but the words 'No it's not'.

We live in a constitutional democracy - although that got stretched to breaking point this year and may yet do so again - where oppositional politics is encouraged in every way. Someone says A so a person with view B is delivered to argue.

The BBC fights to stay neutral and since people on all sides think it doesn't it probably does but from time to time the oppositional style leads everyone to call foul. The science of climate change is pretty clear and so you don't need to balance it with a climate change denier. It is what to do about it that is the more complex discussion and has sides.

Plus, we don't have a neutral press. I'm not going there.

'The problem' said Matt Forde on 'The Political Party' podcast '...is that politics is often the war between two imperfect opposites.' I agree, but often presented as the war between two perfect opposites.

On 27/5/16 Richard Osman, perhaps one of our trainee national treasures, said, on Twitter, 'In most debates we have to listen to people who shout the loudest or are the most certain of their views. That doesn't represent most of us'.

So up until 2016 we had an electoral pie diagram that had blue wedges and red wedges of roughly similar sizes and almost always at least 35% plus smaller green, yellow and other coloured wedges. If we imagine it as an actual pie with slices, in 2016 we invited someone to have a slice of pie and they cut it, horizontally, through the middle.

And over the next three and half years our first past the post system, which we were reminded in a referendum gives us strong government and the people agreed, polarised to where we are now, that this election is about Brexit whether we like it or not. The Conservatives have allied themselves totally with leave, removing the whip from non-conformists. The Lib Dems have allied themselves totally with remain and the Labour party are trying desperately not to have their party re-aligned on Brexit lines.

On 16th June 2016 I wrote on my blog, 'Whatever the end result a referendum stops democracy in its tracks. We will have to move on with what looks as if it will be a 55/45 on a maximum 80% turn-out. And that, my friends, is a divided kingdom.'

A rare outbreak of insight, if I say so myself.

How does my Christian faith help me with how to vote. I have four things:

1. I am on the side of the poor. Anybody of faith who manages to read the Bible and not consider there is a call on their compassion, action and money towards the poor is, I believe, reading it wrong. But the dilemma this gives me is that:

a) I am on the side of the poor.

b) The poor, largely, voted for Brexit.

c) I believe Brexit will make the poor, poorer.

Before the referendum, journalist Rod Liddle said 'Somehow this referendum has caught the imagination of ordinary working communities who see it as a chance to register the complaint that something, not sure what, is changing about their world and they don't like it.'

Giles Fraser, prominent Christian thinker and minister and also Brexiter campaigned that our focus on making the EU more equal was a bias against the poor of the rest of the world. Although I don't think a huge amount of people who agree with him also want to see mass immigration from much poorer parts of the world. He also noted that for some communities the massive increase of residents from overseas, over a short period of time, upset them. Not necessarily because they were racists but somehow because they had lost their home.

My Christianity tells me to try to use my vote based on what to give not what to get.

2. I am on the side of the truth. Jesus Christ described himself as the way, the truth and the life. I find truth in short-supply lately in political campaigning.

Once 'We campaign in poetry; we govern in prose' (Mario Cuomo, Governor of New York, Democrat. 1985 placed on Leo McGary's lips in The West Wing by Aaron Sorkin) was seen as a helpful reminder.

Campaigning in half-truths is clever. Putting on the side of a bus that we send £350m a week to the EU made sure that how much we send was the subject of the conversation. It wasn't £350m. But it wasn't nothing either.

One of the problems with the remain campaign is that they didn't think of a parallel outrageous claim to put on the side of a bus. Maybe 'The EU has done more for peace in Europe than any other organisation since World War 2' would have changed the subject. I have no idea if it is true. It is almost untestable.

But to go from there to the cynical ploy utilised this week, after the leaders debate, of rebranding the Conservative Official Twitter feed as a fact-checking site felt, to me, like some line was crossed.

It was designed, I'm sure, to make the conversation about that and not about what the Conservative leader said. And it worked. I applaud the genius in the way I applaud the thieves in the Italian Job.

In 2018 a summary of the attitude to Donald Trump by philosopher Julian Baggini was this, 'People didn't vote for trump because he is telling the truth. They think all politicians are liars but he's 'our liar'' (Journalism in a Post-Truth World - Bath Festival).

But now, pick the bones out of this exchange, in one of Radio 4's current appallingly unnecessary bits of political vox pop from round the country. A hairdresser from South Wales was asked about her voting plan. She said:

'I'm going to vote for Boris Johnson. I know he's a liar but I don't always tell the truth so that makes him more human to me so I trust him.'

Where do I start with that? Actually, to be honest, I go back to my Bible and that statement on Jesus' lips. It is in John's Gospel. John used philosophical dialogue to make points. He put things on Jesus' lips that he didn't actually say in order to paraphrase what he did actually mean. It was normal to do that in those days. It's a tough conundrum this truth business but it was Jesus' followers who called him the truth. To find out if that is true you can read the other things he said in other Gospels where the intention was more reportage than philosophy.

But in this section, let me give the last word to Richard Dawkins, not the church's greatest fan. He said, responding to the suggestion that all politicians lie, 'Unlike all other politicians, Johnson and Trump become more popular with their fans the more they lie and the more appallingly they behave. That's what's new.' (Twitter 20/11/19)

3. I am on the side of both facts and feelings. A victim of a mugging, walking in through the door will find it hard to engage with the truth that crime figures are down.

In the USA in 2017 in the presidential election campaign an exchange happened that went something like:

Violent crime is up

Actually it isn't - it's down nationally

Not in Chicago it isn't

Actually it is - overall crime figures in Chicago are down but one or two types of violent crime went up

People don't feel the crime figures are down

Which led comedian/commentator John Oliver to say that 'He brought feelings to a facts fight.'

But feelings are important. Those who have voted to leave the EU have every right to demand that what we said we'd do, we'll do.

A decision to live as a person of faith is just as much about feelings - it feels right to me - as facts - it works for me.

Changing your mind involves vulnerability. Nations find it hard to change their minds.

4. I am on the side of inclusivity and equality. Galatians 3:28 says 'In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female - we are all one in Christ Jesus.'

Whereas Ian Burrell, in theippaer 13/11/17 said '...Brexit has left our nation horribly divided undermining the Union and fuelling nationalism while opening up fissures between young and old, rich and poor, north and south.' The opposite of Galatians 3:28.

In November 2017 Roger Scruton wrote in The Times:

'You can be a loyal subject of the British Crown and also English, Scottish, Irish or Welsh when it comes to other aspects of belonging. You can be a British Nigerian or a British Pakistani, and the future of our country depends upon the process of integration that will persuade new arrivals that this is not only possible but also necessary if they are to make a home here. You can be a British Muslim, Jew, Christian or atheist, since nationality, defined by land and sovereignty, does not extinguish religious attachment.'

My little churches have dealt with the fallout by not talking about it very much. Perhaps we should have and this might be a start.

For someone who values inclusivity I find that my social media friends and my family largely take the same view as me on Brexit. I chastise myself that I didn't know enough of the sort of people I professed to be wanting to serve and help.

Likewise one of my Facebook friends makes regular comments about Brexit meaning Brexit and last Christmas, responding to the suggestion that Brexit has ruined some families Christmas dinners, said 'No problem here - we're all no deal leavers.'

Do we know enough people not like us?

It is nearly Advent. A time for waiting, hoping and praying in the Christian year. For looking forward to the celebration of Jesus' birth (the date is another liberty with the truth by the way) and wanting his earthly influence to grow.

Recent research by World Vision told us that people outside the church think it is judgemental, anti-science and irrelevant. It's none of those things; but we need to do a better job of saying so.

Thank God for Brexit? I can't say. All I can do is continue a quest for truth, inclusivity, equality and hospitality and adjust my behaviour in the light of it.

I'll drink to that. Beer and chat my friends. Beer and chat.