Providence or judgement – it’s too early to tell

In 1972, the then Chinese premier Zhou Enlai was widely misquoted as saying that it was too early to tell whether the French revolution had been a success. It turns out that he was actually referring to the 1968 student uprising, not the 18^th century revolution. But why let the facts ruin a good quip. At the turn of a new year, with Boris Johnston’s new administration (it could hardly be called a new government) still to take full shape, I’ve been trying to work out what to make of recent events.

I dutifully made my way to my polling station on the 12^th December, more or less decided on which party not to vote for, but less sure who I should vote for. When it came to it, I just couldn’t put my “x” against the Conservative party candidate. Where I should put it was more of a struggle. On one level this is all entirely unimportant. We’re talking about just one vote (ie mine) in a safe Labour seat. Unlike so many in the north of England it is still a safe Labour seat. Voting Conservative in this election was a possibility simply because they were the only party on the ballot that were going to deliver on the outcome of the EU referendum. As I’ve explained before, even although I voted “remain” I think that the clear (if narrow) result of the referendum should be upheld. That’s means leaving the EU. I find none of the subsequent rewriting, rewording, rerunning, and reneging on the outcome of the referendum in any way convincing. Even had the alternatives been a lot more palatable than they were, I would still have considered voting Conservative on the basis of this one issue. But on careful reflection, I couldn’t do it. Here’s why.

I have lots of friends in the US who thought carefully about their options in the last US presidential election, and decided for a whole heap of reasons that they would vote for one Donald J. Trump. I thought, and still think, that this was a crazy decision. I understand that many of them wanted a president that would make conservative picks for the Supreme Court and I understand why this is important to them. For others there were other issues like Trump’s support of the state of Israel. What I don’t understand is why these political issues trump (as it were) the demonstrable fact that the Donald is a serial liar, with apparently little respect for truth. He has raised telling not just half-truths (the terminological inexactitude so beloved by British politicians), but full blown non-truths to a finely honed political weapon. He has systematically sought to undermine truth more widely by sowing confusion at every turn. He has branded those who have sought to hold him to account and fact check him as “fake news” peddlers. Words matter. True words matter, and false words matter. I’ve concluded that none of this is accidental, it’s policy. Neither is it because of some intellectual impairment on his part. It’s done deliberately, knowingly and with calculation. It is unforgivable because it is plain wrong; and it is corrosive.

Then there’s the issue of his attitude to women. The “Access Hollywood” tape should have killed his presidential campaign stone dead. He never fully repudiated the views he expressed, and indeed subsequently suggested that the tape is not genuine. The lack of plain human decency revealed by that particularly nasty conversation was exhibited on other occasions during the campaign, and has been exhibited time after time in his conduct as president particularly in his twitter rants. The notion that he could be re-elected, now that his basic indecency has been chronicled, observed and established, is terrifying in the extreme.

I would gently point out to my US chums that the US Supreme Court is mentioned nowhere in Scripture. But a commitment to truth is. Being careful with our words does. Integrity, honesty, decency all do. What Scripture teaches about the role of women we can argue about. What we can’t argue about is the basic respect that all are entitled to, which contrasts sharply with Trump’s attitude that debases women to the level of exploitable objects. There is such a basic disconnect between the values, attitudes and behaviours that we are called to, and those exhibited on a daily (not to say hourly) basis by the Donald. I cannot understand how so much of what Scripture calls for can be set aside, in order to obtain questionable temporal objectives that Scripture has little to say about. “Evangelicals” as a block in the US elevated arguable political gains above clear values that they should have been articulating and honouring. But what struck me on the way to polling station was that I was in danger of doing exactly the same thing.  

Brexit, the issue that nearly decided my vote, isn’t in the Bible either. Things like telling the truth are. We can argue about austerity, universal credit, NHS spending, taxation and the rest.  And we should. We can argue about whether and how we should leave the EU. Of course these things are important. But there are other things that are more important. Leading the Conservative party (by their active choice) is a man whose basic dishonesty over a long period should have disqualified him from high office. Boris has, after all, lost two jobs (one in journalism, one in politics) for telling straight out lies. And there was no obvious evidence in the election campaign that he has any regrets about what has been the hallmark of his basic approach to life as well as politics. This is enough to disqualify him from high office in the estimation of some who politically share many of his views. And while he hasn’t quite had an “Access Hollywood” moment, there are doubts about his attitude to women and family. I know that in our system all politics is about compromise, and if I’m waiting for what I think is perfection, I’ll be dead and in the glory before it arrives. But I only had one vote to cast, and basic issues of honesty, truth telling and decency determined how it wasn’t cast. Because our elections are a secret ballot, I don't need to let slip here how it was cast.

But given that even without my one vote Boris still got his “stonking” victory, did I just get it wrong? Well, that’s clearly logical possible. But I have my responsibilities, and I leave it to the Almighty to decide the big issue of who gets power. His perspective is bigger, deeper and longer than mine. Bigger forces were at work, and always are. Underpinning the stuff we see is a deeper reality of a God who continues to work His purposes out. It may turn out that, in ways invisible to me, Boris is just the right man for the times. Just the man to get us through the Brexit morass we find ourselves in (for which he is partly responsible after all). If we do get out of the situation we’re in with anything like limited damage, this will not reflect on Boris’ brilliance, although undoubtedly political hubris will impel him to claim exactly that. It will be providence protecting us from ourselves – again.

Of course it could be that things are going to go from bad to worse. The predictions of the remainers will turn out to be spot on, and we will endure economic, political, security and strategic disaster. We will never reach the sun-lit uplands promised by the hard brexiteers. In that case, Boris may turn out to be a modern form of Old Testament Babylon: God’s instrument of judgment. We would certainly deserve it. There are many ways in which the culture in which we find ourselves is deeply dysfunctional. I’m partly to blame of course by not being the salt and light that I should be. For all that, although we Christians may moan about the state of the UK, the fact is that compared to many of our brothers and sisters elsewhere we’ve actually had it very easy for a very long time. Maybe the ease, freedom and relative order we’ve enjoyed partly explains out lack of saltiness. Maybe it is coming to an end. I have no way of knowing. 

Time will tell. It’s too early to know which way it will go.  

The election that never should have been

I’ve just been to vote. That isn’t a strange occurrence in a Western democracy of course (notwithstanding frequently appalling turnout figures).  But this was an election I should never have had the opportunity to participate in. Over the next few days, all over the European Union, about 400 million people will have the opportunity to vote for the EU parliament. But I took part in another vote back in 2016, and the outcome of that vote (the EU membership referendum in the UK) meant that I should no longer be a citizen of the EU and entitled to vote in its parliamentary election.

For what it’s worth, in the referendum I held my nose and voted to remain in the EU. I held my nose because there’s a lot not to like about the EU. It could be argued that it is both a corrupt and corrupting organisation. Its own auditors frequently have a problem with its accounts, and have been consistently critical of both central EU institutions and member states. EU civil servants and MEPs seem to be on a gravy train that is opaque to public scrutiny and immune to criticism. And an insulated, self perpetuating elite seem to perpetually benefit, while all over the continent all sorts of people struggle to obtain life’s necessities. It is great at coming up with rules big and small, but equally capable of bending or breaking them when it suits. Although it should be all for one and one for all, the big states often seem to bully the small states, the North exploits the South, the East bridles under the strictures of the West, the French want to be in charge, and Luxembourg is. I get all this. 

But, many of these criticisms can be levelled at the bureaucracies and politicians in the member states as well. And on the other side of the ledger the EU has provided a forum for wide European debate about pressing issues that is far superior to the way we used to settle arguments in this part of the world. Many of these issues, like climate change or migration, or Trump or China, are much better handled by Europe acting in concert. The EU has brought real economic, educational and social benefits to many European states which might have been much the weaker without them (with consequences for us in the UK). It has brought direct economic and social benefits to the UK, sometimes in the teeth of UK Government resentment and opposition (just look at Glasgow’s experience during the 1980’s). By and large we’ve consistently punched above our weight within EU institutions, and at least in financial terms have got more out than we put in – particularly in science, technology and education. The UK pushed for the single market and radical expansion of the EEC which became the EU, having a major influence on the direction it took to get to where it is today. Finally, at the time of the referendum what weighed heaviest with me were the economic consequences of withdrawal. I confess the importance of the common external tariff passed me by, but I heard and understood the warnings about the consequences of being cut off from membership of the EU single market. I always reckoned the land border on the island of Ireland would be a problem. So I voted to remain.

And I was on the losing side.

I wasn’t on the losing side because all those who voted leave were stupid or lazy. I wasn’t on the losing side because a majority of my fellow citizens were seriously misled. I was on the losing side because for a whole complex of reasons,  that it is pointless now to psychoanalyse,  more people voted to leave than remain – simple as. And now we all have to live with the consequences. I think a lot of them will be bad consequences. But what kind of democracy do we have if some small group gets to decide when we have to be protected from ourselves?

We have a representative democracy where these issues should have been settled in our representative institutions, primarily in the House of Commons. The issues are complex, and needed to be debated and thought through in a way that was never going to happen in a binary referendum campaign. But the political class, whether because of lack of courage, or sense, or just political morality, bottled it, and abrogated their responsibility. They gave us a binary choice, and we chose. I might not like the choice, but that’s life, and that’s democracy. Or at least it should have been.

For complex reasons, the politicians then compounded their folly by conniving to subvert the choice made in the referendum. There’s not really much to choose between the hard brexiteers and the remoaners, and all the other splinter groups that have emerged. Giving us another choice will not atone for their guilt. In fact, we did have a subsequent choice in a general election, when by an overwhelming majority people did not vote for those saying the referendum result should be ignored. That choice was an option on the ballot, and very few opted for it. There’s plenty of blame to go around, and it’s genuinely difficult to see any way forward, let alone one which is attractive. So we’re stuck. And because we’re stuck in the EU, I had to go and vote this evening.

It wasn’t difficult, and it wasn’t dangerous. I didn’t have to join a long queue in baking heat and wait for hours. I don’t have any doubt that my vote will be counted (although whether it counts is another matter). Things were well organised, free and fair. It was a warm spring evening, and the staff at the polling station were polite and quietly competent as they went about their business. These are all things to be grateful for. I’m glad that once again I got to do it. But I really shouldn’t have had to.