Triangulation, triangulation, triangulation
6:52am
When we have all finished guffawing at the idea, reported in today’s Telegraph, that
Labour are to signal a return to a Blairite agenda with manifesto pledges on family rights and anti-social behaviour in an attempt to recapture Middle England voters
let us marvel at the ever-more baroque architecture of political triangulation. As the Cameroons veer leftwards, Gordon Brown is positioning himself in the vacuum they have created on the right. Why has he done this? Simple. Because even he knows – and Peter Mandelson most certainly knows, but David Cameron doesn’t appear to grasp – that general elections are never won on the left but in socially conservative Middle England.
That’s why Blair won, because he campaigned on crime and family values. He actually stood for something completely different, of course, and Brown even more so; Labour’s pitch is risible. But that’s another matter. The point is that in the politics of cynicism, there’s a right way to triangulate and a wrong way. Blair/Brown got it right. David Obameron has got it wrong.
Daily Mail, 12 April 2010
The Church and the judiciary are two of the most venerable pillars of the establishment.
But in an explosive development, war has been declared between them over one of the most fundamental aspects of our society — freedom of religious conscience.
In an unprecedented move, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey, and other church leaders are calling upon the Master of the Rolls and other senior judges to stand down from future Court of Appeal hearings involving cases of religious discrimination because of the judges’ perceived bias against Christianity.
The churchmen believe that because of these judges’ past rulings, there is no chance of a ‘fair’ judgment if they hear the latest such case, which has been scheduled for Thursday .
This involves Gary McFarlane, formerly a Christian relationship counsellor for Relate. He is appealing against an employment tribunal ruling that upheld his sacking for refusing to give sex therapy to homosexual couples.
According to newspaper reports, Lord Carey has prepared a witness statement in support of Mr McFarlane in which he will apparently accuse the Court of Appeal of making a series of ‘disturbing’ judgments and being responsible for some ‘dangerous’ reasoning which could lead to Christians being banned from the workplace.
In the light of recent events, such fears are scarcely exaggerated. For Christianity is under relentless attack from secular British institutions, as a result of which the freedom of Christians to practise their religion is being lost.
A steady stream of Christians have found themselves out of a job on account of their religious beliefs. When nurse Shirley Chaplin refused to remove her cross, for example, she was prevented by the Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Trust from working with patients.
And when Duke Amachree, a Christian homelessness officer with Wandsworth council, advised a client to put her faith in God, he was promptly suspended, marched off the premises and then sacked.
In a string of other cases, Christians have been prevented from serving on adoption panels or as marriage registrars because their religious beliefs mean they cannot sanction civil partnerships or gay adoption.
Such employment difficulties reflect a wider institutional animus against Christianity. Teachers bend over backwards to promote other religions at its expense. The BBC and the artistic world miss no opportunity to trash it or hold it up to ridicule, while the political class and intelligentsia take an axe to its moral precepts on issues such as euthanasia, sex outside marriage and abortion.
Among some churchmen, there has been rumbling alarm about this for some time. Only last month, Lord Carey and a group of bishops wrote to the Press to denounce such ‘discrimination’ against churchgoers as ‘unacceptable in a civilised society’.
But this new initiative elevates such protest to a very different level.
To prevent discrimination against Christians being set in stone, Lord Carey wants religious discrimination cases to be heard by a special panel of judges with some knowledge of religious matters.
As an insult to some of the biggest wigs in the land, this could hardly be exaggerated. By throwing down the gauntlet to the judiciary in this way, Lord Carey is mounting a full-frontal challenge to some of those who most influence our society.
The last of several final straws for these clerics was the case of Lilian Ladele, a registrar who was sacked by Islington council after she refused to conduct civil partnership ceremonies because they were against her Christian beliefs.
Led by the Master of the Rolls, Lord Neuberger — the second most important judge in England — the Appeal Court ruled that it was unlawful for her to refuse to do so.
It might be argued that these judges were merely ruling on the basis of anti-discrimination law and that they were right to do so.
But in fact, these judges had discretion to rule in Ms Ladele’s favour because the law upholds not one principle relevant to this case, but two — and they compete with each other. For enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights is the right to exercise religious conscience.
Why, then, did the judges in this case set aside the Human Rights Convention, which they normally revere as holy Writ? Because, said Lord Neuberger, it only protected those religious beliefs which were ‘worthy of respect in a democratic society and are not incompatible with human dignity’.
So what the Master of the Rolls effectively seemed to be saying was that Christian beliefs are unworthy of respect in a democracy, and incompatible with human dignity — a truly preposterous claim, since Judeo-Christian precepts invented the concept of human dignity
Indeed, such a ruling comes very close indeed to criminalising Christianity. For if putting Christian belief into practice is outlawed, it won’t be long before Christian believers find themselvesoutlawed.
No wonder Lord Carey and his colleagues have been galvanised into militant action. For under the guise of promoting ‘tolerance’ and ‘liberal’ social attitudes, anti-discrimination law is deeply intolerant and illiberal.
That’s because it has nothing to do with fairness and everything to do with ideology. It is innately on the side of minorities on the basis that they are by definition vulnerable to the majority. So in the hands of the judiciary, it has turned into a fearsome weapon against Britain’s mainstream attitudes and faith.
The result is that Christianity is now in danger of being turned into a despised and marginalised creed practised only by consenting adults in private.
Christians are already being forced into renouncing their religious beliefs if they want to remain in certain jobs. This is simply intolerable in a liberal society where freedom of religious conscience is a bedrock value.
Yet while Christians find themselves under the legal cosh, a double standard is employed towards certain minority faiths. Thus a Christian nurse is told she can’t work with patients unless she removes her cross while Muslim NHS staff have been exempted from hygiene rules stipulating that their forearms must remain uncovered.
The relentless message from the top of our society is that Christianity — the foundation-stone of Western liberty, tolerance and democracy — is intolerant, bigoted and objectionable in contrast to other faiths. Their own precepts may be truly inimical to liberty or reason, but to these we must not turn a politically correct hair.
What Lord Carey has rightly grasped is that if the judiciary is not challenged and this process is not stopped, within a short space of time our society will have slid off the edge of a cultural cliff.
But he is having to fight more than the judiciary. For on this great issue — the defence of his religion and the values of this society — his successor, Dr Rowan Williams, is conspicuously silent.
Indeed, more than that he is positively embracing his faith’s destruction. For along with Lord Phillips, the former senior Law Lord, Dr Williams has welcomed the advance in Britain of Islamic sharia law — which really is inimical to democracy and equality.
The highest echelons of both the Church and the judiciary seem incapable of grasping why Christianity is crucial to this country and has to be upheld and defended against attempts to undermine and destroy it, from wherever such attacks may come.
To which all one can say is thank God for Lord Carey — and doubtless He is saying so, too.
Posts
