The three main party manifestos tell you surprisingly little about where the parties stand on issues of politics, conscience and faith – there is nothing, for example, on euthanasia. Only the Labour Party suggests any change in abortion law, proposing that the 1967 Abortion Act be applied to Northern Ireland too. But do not be deceived by this apparent silence: the main reason for this is because understanding the moral landscape of British politics today requires a large degree of political decoding.
Especially when it comes to religious issues. Manifestos are now as much about what is left out as what is put in. They are about prescribing a “tone” rather than offering detailed policy (the Tory manifesto is a slimline 84 pages). There is no doubt that the subtext of the Conservative manifesto is more mainstream – and moral – than previous Tory manifestos. But you have to read the document closely to understand the philosophical hinterland of the next Tory government.
May is not so much aiming at the aspirational middle class but rather tout society, especially the Labour working class. She is seeking to wipe out the very notion of elitism and class through the higher authority of the Good State. May refers to a “belief” not just in society but also in the good that government can do. Slave traders are pilloried as “evil”.
Under May, good government operates like a benevolent higher power that rewards the good and hardworking (ie small business owners) and punishes the wicked (child traffickers) – all for the common good of country and community.
This has troubled some traditional Tories who celebrate the cult of individual enterprise and responsibility. May’s vision of Britain is of a government that is tolerant and virtuous without expressly being fettered to faith issues that might alienate some voters.
The Tory manifesto is silent on abortion and genetics. Yes, there’s talk about “tackling hate crime committed on the basis of religion” and it makes a welcome commitment to replacing the “unfair and ineffective inclusivity rules that prevent the establishment of Roman Catholic schools”. But there is little in the hard print that gives away how this radical Conservative manifesto is the vision of a church-going vicar’s daughter for whom faith means so much personally. Silence on such matters may well prove to be a winning tactic.
The closest the manifesto comes to touching on the messy political area of future life is a passage that refers to society (borrowing from Edmund Burke) as a contract between “those who are living, those who have lived before us, and those who are yet to be born”.
Since May is pitching such an inclusive message to a wide panoply of voters from all backgrounds and faiths, the word “Christian” does not appear once. The phrase “pluralistic, British values” appears several times. In the lexicon of modern moral conservative philosophy, “plural” is intellectual code for patriotic “one-nation” modern Conservatism.
Conservative intellectuals are divided. Whereas Tory historian Andrew Roberts has argued that May’s interventionism could have been devised by Tony Blair and is “widely at odds” with the Toryism of Stanley Baldwin, Margaret Thatcher and Lord Salisbury, the historian Dominic Sandbrook has hailed the manifesto as a “daring” reworking of Burke’s social contract.
The beauty of Conservatism is that it can mean whatever the leader of the party or prime minster wants it to mean. A ruthlessly self-mutating adaptability and flexibility over issues is one reason why the Tories have been the most successful political party in modern European history.
The real clue to where May is coming from lies in the heading of the chapter “Confronting Burning Injustices”. I can’t imagine the word “burning” being included in a manifesto written by George Osborne or David Cameron. The word belongs more to the vocabulary of such radical Victorian social reformers as the Birmingham mayor, Liberal MP and municipal reformer Joe Chamberlain, a political hero of Nick Timothy, May’s chief of staff.
The spirit of Victorian reformers is certainly felt throughout the manifesto, from a commitment to cross-generational social care – hastily tweaked this week lest it cost marginal seats – to redistributing wealth from London and the South-East to wider areas of the country, including neglected coastal communities.
Instead of seizing the centrist ground, the Lib Dems have published a manifesto that makes them sound like a fringe student party (indeed, it was launched in a nightclub). They have caricatured themselves with pledges to decriminalise drugs and to introduce the option to place an “X” on your passport or driving licence for “those who do not wish to identify as either male or female”.
Despite Lib Dem leader Tim Farron’s embarrassing U-turn, after the committed Christian said abortion was “wrong”, the Lib Dem manifesto contains no explicit mention of the party’s militant pro-choice agenda. It’s as if nobody wants to risk upsetting voters too much on matters of religious conscience.
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