The theological illiteracy of Eric Pickles

It is worrying that Eric Pickles is in charge of religion for this government. I first came across his footprints in Bradford, where in the Eighties he was as much responsible as any other politician for the introduction of ‘multicultural’ policies into English cities. He understood that there were Pakistani Muslim votes at stake, and introduced policies to gratify their sensibilities, something conveniently forgotten once he moved down to Essex.

The central flaw in this policy was not that it encouraged Islam but that it locked Pakistani machine politics into the indigenous machine politics of local government. Labour turned out to be the main beneficiary of the process, though you can’t fault Pickles’s political astuteness in trying to make his own party benefit instead. But all in all, the identification of Islam with the power structures of rural Pakistan has been bad both for the religion and its neighbours. You can’t, for example, understand George Galloway’s victory in the Bradford West bye-election except as a reaction by young Muslims against the power of traditional networks, inside and outside the Labour Party.