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March 27, 2006
Blair's Leadership Mistake
As the proverbial brown stuff continues hitting the fan around the Blair government, Blair has now acknowledged the he may have made a "mistake" in acknowledging that he would not seek a fourth term of Prime Minister.
The first response I want to give to this acknowledgment is along the lines 'doh, really?'; however, what's more depressing is what this says about UK politics. After all, Blair is a man who has refused to acknowledge far more significant mistakes around, for example, Iraq; however, he is prepared to acknowledge and talk seriously about a relatively trivial mistake that may have limited his own political authority. Perhaps even sadder, the media (and people like me) pay a considerable amount of attention to this.
Posted by jon_mendel at 02:19 PM
March 19, 2006
Government-Opposition Coalition
Unusually (for us in the UK) the Labour Government here has had to rely on votes from the official opposition party to get through education reforms that are an important part of its policy programme - enough Labour MPs voted against Government policy to mean that it had to rely on the votes of Conservative MPs to get its bill through Parliament. It's unclear what this is going to mean - whether discontent within the Labour Party is now sufficient for the Party to become the opposition to its own Government, while the Government moves closer to the Conservative official opposition. Maybe there's still hope that Labour could be a socialist party again, even if this means opposing its own Government...
Posted by jon_mendel at 10:30 PM
March 09, 2006
Christianity and Politics
The role of Christianity in UK politics has been in the news a lot lately. This is partly because of Blair's acknowledgement that he prayed to God when deciding whether to send UK troops to war in Iraq, and expects God to judge him for his decision. Also, Channel 4 broadcast a Dispatches documentary this week which argued that Christian Fundamentalists pose a significant threat to the UK. As a good Jewish atheist, I was expecting to enjoy both these controversities; however, I was surprised to find myself in the novel situation of feeling sympathetic towards the believers.
The Dispatches documentary made a number of valid points - for example, it was right to be critical of the use of public funds to run evangelical Christian schools (three of which are here in the North-East of England) that allegedly steer pupils towards incorrect beliefs, such as the Creationist account of how life emerged on Earth. However, at times it seemed to be arguing that the problem with the views of these fundamentalists was simply that they deviate from a supposed liberal consensus in UK politics; if liberalism becomes this intolerant of critique than it can become almost as closed as the views of the fundamentalist bigots to which it is often opposed. Religious bigotry should certainly be challenged, but on much stronger grounds than simply claiming that it is non-liberal - for example, one might want to challenge the massive damage done by the type of homophobia spread by evangelical preachers.
Blair of course is not, so far anyone knows, a believer in the same kind of Christian fundamentalism. However, he is a Christian, should be perfectly entitled to pray to his (dead) God if he feels inclined to do so. Frankly, given the massive bloodshed caused in Iraq - the Iraq Body Count currently stands at 33,489-37,589 civilian deaths - whether he went to war with what he thought was God's blessing, or 'just' because he thought it was the right thing to do, or because the fairies at the bottom of the garden told him to does not seem overly important. Regardless of whether he prayed or not, and whether or not Blair will be judged after he dies, those of us here on earth have an opportunity to judge him now; we should take advantage of this and not get sidetracked, even if he does have a few quirky beliefs.
Posted by jon_mendel at 05:22 PM
