For some time we have known about the tension between George Osborne and Iain Duncan Smith over welfare reform. The Chancellor wanted more welfare cuts, and the Work and Pensions Secretary resisted: real reform, he said, would cost money. So far, so understandable. But a new biography of the Chancellor by Janan Ganesh reveals another element behind the struggle. Ganesh writes that Osborne ‘questioned the analytical rigour of the Christian Conservatives who hovered behind the project’. A Treasury source is quoted making it clearer still: ‘He thinks the people pushing this are such total advocates and evangelicals that they blind themselves to any downsides.’
To put it another way, the Christianity of Mr Duncan Smith and his associates makes them suspect. As ‘evangelicals’, they don’t function intellectually the way that others do. That’s new. Until very recently, politicians and pundits regarded Christianity as a system of beliefs and values. Grown-ups might have doctrinal differences, but Christianity was a respectable and rational foundation for a world view. When Lady T rowed with bishops, she dealt with them on their own scriptural terms, saying that the Good Samaritan had to make money to give it away in the first place. Religion was part of public debate, not an impediment to it.
It would be unfair to suggest that Mr Osborne’s reservations about religion in public life are anything but typical. The writer Matthew Parris recently expressed exactly the same kind of reserve, with his characteristic charm and eloquence. He recalled a discussion in which he listened respectfully to the arguments of one anti-abortion MP — until he smelt a rat. ‘I noticed his surname. It struck me he was probably a Roman Catholic. I checked; he was a notably convinced Roman Catholic.’ So Parris concluded that the argument was a smokescreen. ‘He presumably believes that it isn’t really a matter of x weeks or y weeks but that almost any termination after conception is not just a sin but a mortal sin, punishable by eternal damnation.’
In other words, the Catholic MP — who had, I assume, an Irish-sounding surname like my own — could be safely discounted as a rational player in an important debate because ‘presumably’ he’s got a thing about sin and damnation.
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