ConservativeHome's ToryDiary

Liam Fox: A Britain obsessed with celebrity, indifferent to serious learning and unsure of its values and history risks being unable to defend itself

1. Russia is spending over $200 billion in the next five years upgrading its forces.  Vladimir Putin's strategic bombers are probing UK airspace again.
2. The world's greatest exporter of terrorism - Iran - is inching ever closer to becoming a nuclear power.  An Iran - still publicly committed to wipe Israel off the face of the map - with nuclear capability will be able to sponsor 'nuclear terrorism' which may include the detonation of a dirty bomb containing enough radioactive material to contaminate whole cities.
3. The ideology of the Islamic fundamentalist continues to be spread across the globe.  All over the world young Muslims are being exposed to an ideology that is "irreconcilable to our political system and our values."

These were some of the threats outlined by Shadow Defence Secretary Liam Fox yesterday - during a speech to Politea.  He could also have mentioned the increasingly worrying situation in Pakistan.  Dr Fox warned that Britain was a nation that was losing its moral seriousness and that this endangered our ability to meet the threats to our peace and security:

"There seems to have been a view developing in recent years that defines peace simply as the absence of war.  If only we can avoid armed conflict the argument seems to say then we will live in a more peaceful world.  But peace is not simply the absence of war.  Real peace has an unavoidable set of values which accompany it.  Freedom from tyranny, freedom from oppression and freedom from fear are essential for real peace.  Unfortunately we sometimes have to fight and even to die for these freedoms. The need to maintain public support for the conflicts which are sometimes required to ensure these freedoms is a burden which democratic states have to carry but many of our enemies do not.  The absence of a clear and rational argument for the necessity of military action in certain circumstances can hand the advantage to those who wish to undermine our democratic systems and, indeed, our whole way of life.  This is where our social attitudes, our political direction and our national security converge- in the crucial question about the state of our national resilience.  For it is our resilience-  our political and social fortitude- which will determine whether or not we are able to deal with the threats and challenges which lie before us."

Pasted below are sections of Dr Fox's speech in which he identified the key forces weakening Britain's fortitude:

You want an alternative to Heathrow, an elected Party Chairman, to go back to the seaside...

...but you don't want an English Parliament or a disestablished Church.

The final results of our end-December survey are summarised below:

1,816 Tory members were surveyed from 22nd to 28th December.

Cameron's attacks on Labour excess supported by chorus of bishops

Christmas quiz time. Three of the following quotations are from an article by David Cameron in The Sunday Telegraph and three from Church of England Bishops.  Can you guess which are which?

1. “Labour made a lot of promises, but a lot of them have vanished into thin air.  We have not seen a raising of aspirations in the last 13 years, but instead there is a sense of hopelessness."
2. "If "Iraq" is the word that Tony Blair's famous "hand of history" chisels on his political tombstone, then for Gordon Brown the words "Debt Crisis" will serve as a suitable epitaph."
3. "It is not Labour's turbo‑capitalism we need, where a blind eye is turned to every corporate excess."
4. “The Government isn’t telling people who are already deep in debt to stop overextending themselves, but instead is urging us to spend more. That is morally suspect and morally feeble. It is unfair and irresponsible of the Government to put pressure on the public to spend in order to revive the economy.”
5. "If it is right to demand personal responsibility from the welfare claimant, the absent father or the career criminal then it is right to expect corporate responsibility from the chief executive, the hedge‑fund manager and the City fraudster, too."
6. "It is ironic that under a Labour government we have the poor feeling they have been betrayed and the gap is getting ever greater."

The modern Conservative Party caters for everyone

(In case you cannot read the leaflet inserted in the bottom left it's from the Conservative Humanist Association).

Coffee House has a photograph of David Miliband and his banana!

Labour lacks moral compass, says Church of England

The questions over Caroline Spelman MP's employment of her nanny/ secretary may have led the Today programme but the much more substantial story is the splash in today's Times: Church attacks Labour for betraying Christians.

We didn't think the Church of England's high-ups had it in them but a report to be launched on Monday - entilted Moral, Without A Compass; a clear twist of Gordon Brown's use of that term - written by senior bishops will accuse the Government of generating a spiritual crisis in Britain.  In particular:

• Labour will be accused of “deep religious illiteracy”: “The Government is planning blind and has no convincing moral direction.”
• The Church complains that it has been excluded from policy discussions despite its expertise in adult education, working with the poor, criminal justice, refugee services, welfare-to-work, job creation and the rural economy: “We encountered on the part of the Government a significant lack of understanding or interest in the Church of England’s current or potential contribution in the public sphere."
• Disproportionate fretting over the Muslim community: “A conscious focus on minority communities was being achieved, to the relative exclusion of the Christian church and hundreds of other charities."

Moral, Without A Compass doesn't just question Labour.  It welcomes the emphasis given to poverty by David Cameron and Iain Duncan Smith:

“The Conservatives’ Social Justice report is stridently antipoverty, but what is notable is that it suggests that poverty is being driven by a breakdown in the ‘social fabric’ of the UK. In contrast to Labour, the Conservatives’ report argues that renewal will come by liberating the third sector from the incessant pressure to do the Government’s work in the Government’s way.”

William Hague: Religious faith is needed to help tackle today's greatest injustices

Earlier today we highlighted a wide-ranging lecture by Iain Duncan Smith about the Conservative Party's poverty-fighting mission.   Also speaking last night - on this side of the Atlantic - was William Hague.  He was giving one of the lectures in Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor's Faith and Life in Britain series.  Watch the full forty minute lecture here.

The Shadow Foreign Secretary spent much of his time talking about the religious faith that motivated William Wilberforce and inspired the Clapham Sect's battle against slavery.  He noted Wilberforce's belief that “religion is the business of every one, but that its advancement or decline in any country is so intimately connected with the temporal interests of society, as to render it the peculiar concern of a political man…”.  Mr Hague listed the legacy of the Clapham Sect, which Wilberforce was a part of:

"The Clapham community was a place of fellowship, inclusiveness, and understanding, and represented a set of values in polar opposition to the prevailing social ills of the day. Wherever there was a need or an injustice, they applied their considerable resources to the problem. From cancer clinics to prisons, Sunday schools to orphanages, asylums for disabled children to education initiatives in Africa, virtually no cause was left untouched by their efforts. They founded the Society for Religious Instructions to the Negroes in the West Indies, the London Missionary Society, the Society for Bettering the Condition and Increasing the Comforts of the Poor, the Church Missionary Society, the Religious Tract Society, the Society for Promoting the Religious Instruction of Youth, the Society for the Relief of the Industrious Poor, the British National Endeavour for the Orphans of Soldiers and Sailors, The Asylum House of Refuge for the Reception of Orphaned Girls the Settlements of whose Parents Cannot be Found, the Institution for the Protection of Young Girls, the Society for the Suppression of Vice, the Sunday School Union, the Society for Superceding the Necessity for Climbing Boys in Cleansing Chimneys, the British and Foreign Bible Society and the wonderfully named, Friendly Female Society, for the Relief of Poor, Infirm, Aged Widows, and Single Women of Good Character, Who Have Seen Better Days."

Although William Hague noted that interpretations of religion brought many problems he was of the overall view that it was needed by society today - not least in fighting human trafficking.

Tory victory on Yusuf al-Qaradawi

A victory for David Cameron and Pauline Neville-Jones today.  A big victory.  The Times is reporting that Ken Livingstone's favourite preacher of hate, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, has been denied entry to Britain.  The Muslim Council of Britain has accused the Tories Government of surrendering to “unreasonable demands spearheaded by the Tory leader”.  That statement tells us a great deal about the MCB.

ToryDiary reported David Cameron's demands for Qaradawi to be excluded from Britain last week.  Dame Pauline Neville-Jones had singled out the controversial cleric much earlier - in her security policy group report.

The decision of the Government is a snub to Ken Livingstone who has regularly defended Qaradawi despite his offensive remarks about gay people and the merits of suicide bombing.  This is Boris Johnson's reaction:

“It is absolutely right that this preacher of hate has been refused entry to the UK.  This decision highlights Ken Livingstone’s gross error of judgement in inviting a man to London who espouses such vile opinions.”

But it's one step forward and one step back.  The Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has told the BBC that Sharia Law is unavoidable in the UK.  Harry's Place has erupted: "Isn't there something particularly pathetic about a Bishop in a church which - in theory - exists to evangelise, shilling on behalf of the theocratic politics of another religion, which wishes to write their version of "god's will" into law?"  It can't be long before Melanie Phillips has something strong to say, too...

The Guardian-isation of Christmas?

Do the sermons of the world's churchleaders resemble Guardian editorials?  That was the conclusion of Giles Fraser writing in the Thursday edition of Britain's leading left-liberal newspaper (and featured on the Today programme at 8.50am this morning).   Rev Fraser, Vicar of Putney, reflected on the Christmas messages of key churchleaders.  There was Rowan Williams' anxiety about global warming.  Cormac Murphy O'Connor's focus on asylum seekers.  The Pope's concern about war.

A few thoughts:

• Concern for the environment, for the asylum seeker and a disposition against war are not signs of being left-wing.  That they are popularly perceived as such is a failure of Britain's centre-right.  For too long Conservatives have allowed Labour to claim a monopoly of the moral high ground.  It is one of the most promising aspects of Project Cameron that Conservatives are now beginning to compete with the left on issues such as conservation and social justice.
• What is true, however, is that there are weaknesses in the messages parroted by most churchleaders.  Three stand out:
  • There is a tendency to over-emphasise certain issues and neglect others.  Britain's churchleaders can, for example, be accused of talking too little about the family, about the unborn and about the dangers of large, centralised government.
  • Churchleaders can quite properly discuss the environment and poverty but they are wrong to recommend big state solutions to those problems.  Free market solutions to pollution and the role of civil society in leading the fight against poverty are routinely neglected.
  • Most importantly there is a politicisation of Christianity.  The churches that are emptying across Britain are the churches where the ministers have given up  on evangelism and are talking constantly about "issues".  Britain's healthiest churches are the Bible-believing churches and the churches that are running their own social action projects - not waiting for government to act.

PS John Redwood is brave enough to identify a capitalist message within the Christmas story:

"It is traditional at this time of year for commentators to misrepseresent the Christmas story, urging more social housing to deal with the problem of homelessness.  If they read the bible story more carefully, they would see it was not a housing shortage but a hotel bedroom shortage that caused the trouble. This shortage had been brought on by a nasty government, forcing people to travel away from their homes to the large towns and cities to register and to pay a tax. It was some kind of combination of an an early forerunner of ID cards with a poll tax."

Related video: A two minute video finds both Democrats and Republicans wanting: Who would Jesus vote for?

Can devout Christians be Prime Minister?

The former Liberal Democrat leader, Menzies Campbell, appeared yesterday to question the compatibility of serious Christianity with electoral acceptability.  Sir Ming's contribution to BBC1's Blair Years was quoted in an Independent on Sunday story about Tony Blair's faith:

"The public might have been less willing to give [Blair] the triumph of three consecutive general election victories if they'd known the extent to which ethical values would overshadow pragmatism."

Really?  In my experience, a lot of churchgoers vote for the LibDems.  I hope that they have the opportunity to study Sir Ming's ill-defined scepticism towards "ethical values".

For me, mainstream Christianity has been and is a force for good in public life.  This has been true historically and is true now.  I'm not going to name names but in today's Conservative Party, a large number of churchgoers are leading Tory thinking on social justice at home, human rights abroad and a commitment to better stewardship of the environment.  In America it is the much-maligned Christian Right that is challenging the Republicans to think more about the urban poor and international challenges like Darfur.    

Although a lot is made of Tony Blair's Christianity it was not applied predictably.  I don't want to question his sincerity but, as a legislator, he was not, for example, a reliable defender of the unborn.  The discussions he has had with priests about his spiritual journey to Rome must have been interesting.

As for David Cameron, he has been very private about his faith.  Last March he did venture this, however: "Yes, I'm a little more than an Easter and Christmas Christian. I go to church about once a month - so I'm a typical Church of England, slightly laid-back Christian."

The key reason why many Britons have turned against religion is probably fear of Islamic extremism.  Melanie Phillips addresses this in her Mail column today:

"Islamic terrorism and the demented beliefs that fuel it have given all religion a bad name.  Especially these days when people turn themselves into human bombs and blow countless innocents to bits in the expectation that they will be rewarded with 72 virgins in paradise."

The challenge for those who believe that politics is enriched by the involvement of Christians, Jews and moderate Muslims is to take the lead in opposing extremist followers of religion.  Otherwise the idea will grow that all religion is bad and opposition to fundamentalist schools will, for example, see renewed moves against all faith schools and charities.  The main losers of such moves will be the children who then get educated at less good schools and the many beneficiaries of faith-based social projects.

In this context, it is regrettable that the Archbishop of Canterbury used an interview with a Muslim lifestyle magazine to knock America and fail to condemn Islamic violence.

Related link: Michael Gove defends the power of religious faith

Can Cameron end the Labour Party's "special relationship" with black voters?

The cover feature in this week's New Statesman is a report on the Tory relationship with Britain's black voters - Black and Blue.  The article by David Matthews notes that the Tories won just 2% of the Black and Minority Ethnic vote at the last election.  Can it be turned around?

Two black candidates - selected for the Conservatives in target seats - think it can.

Chippenham constituency's Wilfred Emmanuel-Jones is quoted in David Matthews' piece: ""The Labour Party has had the black vote for over 50 years and what have they done with it?  Where are the black MPs on the Labour front bench?"

If Labour have failed to promote black talent, Shaun Bailey - our Hammersmith candidate - also believes that Labour is talking about the wrong issues: "Climate change, obesity and the environment are not what black people want to hear about. Black people want policies that address crime, education, single parenthood."

The black vote could be crucial for winning the London Mayoralty for Boris Johnson next year.  Ken Livingstone understands that and that is why his proxies launched an all-out assault on him in August over his record on race.

Key to connecting to black voters will be to recognise their concerns about crime and public services - as Shaun Bailey does - but also to recognise that a huge proportion are socially conservative and churchgoers.  The Conservative Christian Fellowship has organised a series of meetings between black churchleaders and the Tory leadership in a bid to ensure that the party understands their concerns.  Support for the family and for faith-based social action should be a key ingredient of Tory efforts to transform that embarrassing 2% figure.  David Cameron addressed related themes in the 2007 William Wilberforce Address.

The party leadership's attempts to win support amongst minority communities also partly explains - rightly or wrongly - the speed with which Caroline Spelman moved to end the career of Nigel Hastilow.

Gove defends the power of religious faith

Great stuff from Michael Gove in The Times.  He reflects on the moral force of Christian leaders like John Sentamu, Archbishop of York, in the light of suggestions from Richard Dawkins et al that religious believers "are in the grip of a tragic delusion":

"John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York, calmly pointed out that the situation in Zimbabwe is a towering moral disgrace. And we need a campaign to topple President Mugabe every bit as urgent as past crusades to get rid of apartheid. He also reminded us that Kate and Gerry McCann weren’t just probably innocent. They are totally innocent. And they will be until the situation ever arises that they have been tried, and found guilty, in a forum better designed to arrive at the truth than the media. One thing is certain: they have lost a daughter and their daily suffering must be torture. Christianity teaches us to show compassion to individuals who find themselves in such a position.  With his affirmation of the need for justice towards the poorest, and love for those who suffer, Sentamu may not speak as wittily as Dawkins. But I think I know whose moral force is more likely to mobilise action against dictatorship and win sympathy for a family enduring agonies that none should know."

Related link: Perfect freedom

'Wilberforce Conservatism'

Last night David Cameron gave the annual William Wilberforce Address to a gathering of more than 850 Christians at an event organised by the Conservative Christian Fellowship.  When I organised the first Wilberforce Address nearly ten years ago the attendance was only a third of that number.  It is a mark of the progress of the CCF under its current director Elizabeth Berridge - and of the star status of David Cameron - that last night's event was so well attended.  The quality of the audience was also high.  The Bishop of Liverpool James Jones (and my hope to be the next Archbishop of Canterbury) chaired proceedings and many black church leaders were also present.  The Conservative Party needs more organisations like the CCF that represent the party to, in its case, the churches and the churches' views to the party.

Perfect freedom

It's Easter Sunday and I hope the more secular readers of ConservativeHome will forgive a dollop of Christianity for today's ToryDiary.

The Cornerstone Group has posted an excellent Margaret Thatcher speech from 1978 on to its website.  The speech is a great insight into Mrs Thatcher's early thinking and includes some powerful references to a proper Conservative and Christian concern for the poor in Britain and overseas.  The speech lauds the superiority of private welfare over state welfare and contains warnings against utopianism and big government.

One theme of the speech - the morally mature citizen - is the main subject of this post, however.  Mrs Thatcher understood that all societies are ultimately sustained by the virtue of their citizens.  Few conservatives expressed this permanent truth better than the great Russell Kirk:

“It has been said by liberal intellectuals that the conservative believes all social questions, at heart, to be questions of private morality. Properly understood, this statement is quite true. A society in which men and women are governed by belief in an enduring moral order, by a strong sense of right and wrong, by personal convictions about justice and honour, will be a good society—whatever political machinery it may utilise; while a society in which men and women are morally adrift, ignorant of norms, and intent chiefly upon gratification of appetites, will be a bad society—no matter how many people vote and no matter how liberal its formal constitution may be.”