I don't think I've ever woken up to a Britain that felt so changed as I did the morning after the results had come in for the 2015 General Election. I went to bed with thoughts of equal red/blue and a generous dollop of orange (and hopefully some refreshing swathes of green) and woke up to a country of two halves - blue and yellow. It was an even bigger shock because the opinion polls had the Tories and Labour running neck and neck, so I had been imagining how parties would have to come together in alliances - even speculating that this was going to be the way of UK politics from now on, and a good middle way it seemed, to me at least.
I suppose it shows how unpredictable politics can be. When party politics was just blue or red, things seemed a lot simpler. It seems ironic that an election campaign which saw more parties represented in front of live audience sessions than ever before, should have paved the way for a political landscape which is more one sided than ever - both south and north of the English/Scottish border. And more oppositional. One can only imagine how it will be for David Cameron, whose party wants to press ahead with more austerity measures, to face Scottish Nationalist MPs across the bench, since their main aim is to oppose austerity. One might almost feel a tiny shred of sympathy for him. Almost.
Waking up to a blue and yellow "United" Kingdom, I felt I was sinking into a pit of gloom all day, and am still struggling. This is to do with many things - the fact so many people now need food banks, the gap between rich and poor, the nagging feeling the NHS isn't safe, etc. etc.
More pressingly, however, I'm gloomy about the following nightmare scenario: David Cameron's 2017 referendum on Europe is fuelled by a UKIP surge (after Nigel's short holiday) and a majority are persuaded our best interests lie outside Europe. This further worsens our relationship with Scotland as they want to stay in Europe, leading to overwhelming pressure for another independence referendum. This time Scotland votes YES. The morning after, I wake up, not even to blue and yellow, but to a blue with an increasingly purple tinge. I am no longer an EU citizen, or even a citizen of the United Kingdom, but a little Englander instead. My passport will be doubly illegitimate.
Prof. Linda Woodhead has carried out research that suggests Anglican clergy consistently find themselves positioned to the left of their congregations politically:
http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2014/31-january/features/features/time-to-get-serious
She argues that England as a whole is now generally slightly right of centre, with Anglicans even more to the right politically. However, 'official church teaching is positioned much further to the left of both the population, and even more so, Anglicans.' I'm not sure what teaching she refers to, but she may have a point. Someone has quipped that Anglicans are 'Telegraph readers led by Guardian readers'. Why is this?
The calling to 'seek and to save the lost', is hard wired into clergy, so that any political party which appears to favour the wealthy over the poorest in society is going to be regarded with suspicion. Ideologically I find it much harder to map the Conservative vision onto a Christian vision, than I do a socialist vision. The liturgy of Ordination for new priests enjoins them to 'resist evil, support the weak and defend the poor'. After a while, it changes the way you see society. Of course, there are many ways of being lost, and lostness can equally apply to those with wealth who are spiritually poor and whose hearts are closed to those in genuine need, those who are unemployed through illness or disability; or who are working and still unable to live at any standard even remotely approaching comfortable. And you do see need when you're a minister. It sniffs you out.
As fortune, or the Lectionary, would have it, that gloomy Friday morning, 8 May, was the feast of Mother Julian of Norwich, whose most famous quotable quote was 'All shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well'. So I tried to take consolation from that. It's just that, as one of our typically slightly less than right wing church leaders tweeted: 'all manner of things may not be quite as well as some of us had hoped'.
I exercised my democratic right to vote this week and took myself off to the local polling station for the European elections. I believe whole heartedly in voting but it inevitably always feels like choosing the lesser of several evils. Though personally I ruled out on principle the 'evil' of voting UKIP.
Sadly UKIP seemed to dominate the media coverage. Even if I agreed with any of their ideas, I couldn't vote for a leader like Nigel Farage. It's just an intuition/gut thing. And not agreeing with any of their policies. Though I suppose you could argue (and a Christian friend did, this week) their two ideas are on the face of it, at least simple - Euroscepticism and curbing on immigration - and perhaps reasonable...
But dig deeper...
It hasn't helped UKIP that certain high profile individuals have brought them into (further) disrepute, though I understand Godfrey Bloom is now an Independent MEP, but after comments about sluts and bongo bongo land and hitting someone over the head with a magazine, there's got to be a large bad taste left in the mouth, even by association. It was enough to see him on Have I Got News For You, being taken apart by Victoria Coren. That was a good episode.
So I've tried to ask myself is what is wrong with wanting to curb immigration and leave Europe? Isn't it all very reasonable? Christians disagree on many political issues - we can be right wing, or left, apparently...But can you really be a Christian, a follower of Jesus, and vote UKIP?
And what are UKIP policies, beyond curbing immigration and leaving Europe? I couldn't find any. It seems the party's main 'success' is to do with being driven along by the charisma of a leader who has a populist way of appealing to 'Britishness', whatever that is, and the need to defend it.
I'm suspicious of anything based on defensiveness. The gospel last Sunday began 'Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me'. The UKIP party website begins 'These are anxious and troubled times. Our politicians do nothing in the face of dangers rising up all around us.'
If there are so much anxiety and danger rising up around us why do so many people want to come and live here? And why is it, as Matthew Parris pointed out in the Times, that in London, one of the most multicultural places in the UK, UKIP actually did poorly; whereas in parts of Essex which are 80% 'White British', UKIP did very well. The reason is this: 'fear and resentment of immigrants does not reduce as proximity to living, breathing immigrants reduces'. (Parris summing it up rather well). Fears of 'the other' flourish in ignorance. A UKIP spokesperson was even forced to admit that it's difficult to gain ground among 'cultured and well educated' Londonders. Says it all really.
The more you tell people 'these are anxious and troubled times' the more they'll believe it. UKIP feed on people's fear of the stranger, and their desire to protect what is theirs by right, a sentiment I find deeply troubling theologically. The Israelites were told to welcome the stranger in their land because they too had been aliens in a strange land, and knew what it was like to long for a better life somewhere else. Their land 'flowing with milk and honey' was a gift from God. Look where feelings of intense ownership and proprietorial-ism have got us... Jesus wasn't plagued by such a need to defend any land, building or set of customs...And people derided him for that too.
So I howled at Stuart Lee's comic take off of UKIP Deputy Leader, Paul Nuttals, who couched his fear of a deluge of Bulgarians to the UK by saying 'Bulgarians need to ensure that their brightest and best people stay in Bulgaria and make it economically prosperous, instead of coming to the UK and serving tea and coffee'.
You can look up the whole sketch on Huff post (Warning: VERY strong language). By reductio ad absurdum Lee shows how very fed up we English are that all these people have been coming over here, teaching us all these foreign customs, like inventing us a national cuisine (Indians) bringing us lace (French Hugenots) laying down the basis of our entire future language and culture (Anglo Saxons) and showing us how to drink out of cups (Beaker Folk). Shocking.
Curbing immigration and leaving Europe. It sounds almost reasonable till you look a bit deeper, listen to your gut, consider Jesus, and watch Nigel Farage on the TV for more than ten seconds.
