Will faith prove Cruddas’ undoing?

Publius

Mr Blackburn writes:
"Faith is not exclusively a matter of observance; historically, it united communities and continues to do so. Britain has long contained largely tolerant plural religious identities"

-- When I read sentences like this, I despair. As for Purnell, nuff said.

Michael

It is certainly all getting very interesting, and the outlines of an internal battle for the future direction of the Labour Party seem to be forming - Denham's piece the other day on ethnic minorities/class etc was part of this move, also.

At root this seems to be a recognition that Labour thinking was traditionally founded on socially conservative roots, a social conservatism that the metropolitan left has for so long sought to eradicate. If Purnell, Cruddas etc. win the day then they will lose the militant social liberals, but I think they'll find a 'narrative' that speaks the same language as those lower socio-economic classes that feel so utterly abandoned.

For anybody that might be interested - http://wp.me/pJiP0-36

Holly ......

Madness is infectious.

Vulture

Hasn't Peter Hoskin passed on the news to you David? He gets it : Coffee Housers don't give a flying fart what James Purnell thinks or writes.

And your contention that 'Faith unites communities' may be true sometimes, but not of Britain today.

Here Faith is the most divisive thing that currently splits our nation.

I'll leave it to you to guess which Faith I'm thinking of. Shouldn't take long.

Ghengis

Nauseating obfuscation --- calculated to mislead the electorate into believing that the politician’s tribes have put to rights the “small matter” of the fraudulent behaviour of those infesting our Parliament, whilst in fact they have made little effort to do so. Their attitude and arrogance in so assuming, demands that each and every one of our votes at the General Election punishes these miscreants..

Rosie

However, it is an interesting development, particularly from Cruddas, and one that I suspect Frank Field would support. If this line develops, there will be an almighty tussle for the 'soul' of Labour as well as for the leadership. That should be worth watching!

Edmund Jerk

I'm afraid this is Labour's and the Left's problem generally: they assume that just because they think up a future for the masses it can be imposed, just like that, on a people who are not religious - or civic minded - at all. Whilst there core vote that is made up of public sector employees, trade unionists, bloomsbury wannabes and welfare claimants - Labour will be the party of post-modern statism (and all the big-government, lies and jargon that entails) until the voters themselves change. Or they can trick Middle England into voting for them again by pretending to be conservatives, which is what they did in 1997.

Oh and can I sign up to the 'we don't want to hear about Purnell anymore' petition please?

David Blackburn

Publius,

Toleration Acts in 1653, 1681, 1685 and 1688.

Jewish Toleration Acts under Cromwell and a century later under Henry Pelham's premiership. This is country has a history of religious tolerance.

Vulture, I'm not overly enamoured with him either. I think he failed at Welfare as well. That said, he thinks philosophically about how best to govern in the interests of the country. Like Cruddas, I don't agree with his conclusions, but the philosophical direction of the Labour movement is interesting, if only for conservatives to decide how best to tackle it.

Vulture

@David B: My reading of Purnell is that he's a Purnellite first and last.

If you were a betting man, I think it's worth a small flutter that he'll be on Dave's team ere too long.

Cruddarse is more seriously interested in ideas : let's hope that the circles in which he discusses them become ever smaller.

Publius

Mr Blackburn writes to Publius:
"Publius,Toleration Acts in 1653, 1681, 1685 and 1688... etc."

-- I don't doubt it, Mr Blackburn. But it was the trendy social-worker Labourite vocabulary I was lamenting, not the facts... "communities," "religious identities", etc.

John Wilkes

Your readers might usefully compare these remarks with Guido's entirely justified diatribe today about the Fabian's. The Labour Party has a historical divide between the "friendly society"/union movement and the Fabian Socialists. The former is probably deeply conservative in the sense of having as its priorities family and mutuality as well as toleration and respect for individual rights (even if achieved collectively). The latter, as Guido perceptively observes, are, in truth, fascists intent on state control and supression of individual rights as well as the creation of a client state. It is perhaps no accident that the latter tend to be more pro-European and the former less. You don't (in fact) need to believe in god or feel the need to support them to wish that the opposition was more in the character of John Cruddas (at least), if he genuinely represents the former strand of opinion.

Marcher Baron

Faith, hope and charity - we've run out of all three where Labour is concerned.

BHN

Brown is an atheist - his father may have been a minister but a Christian does NOT lie, deceive or make viscious personal attacks on other people or let them be done in his name.

djw2009

Don't make me laugh! Faith, my ankle. Why take these politicians' descriptions of themselves as given? Cruddas (the name says it all!) is not a Christian at all. If he were he would not be campaigning for immigration and the demise of Christian Britain. He is yet another one of those, with no belief in "revealed religion" (which is what Christianity claims to be), but in "social religion" - in effect he wants to purloin the claims to goodness and morality of Christianity in support of his own sub-Marxist causes.

terence patrick hewett

@ John Wilkes

John’s précis hits the nail on the head. The Fabian New Statesman versus the re-invigorated Tribune. The top down conspiracy of the Fabian model has finally been rumbled and is becoming unworkable given that technology is giving increasing power to the individual. So my money is on the bottom up William Morris tendency. Go back to your constituencies, put on your sandals and prepare for power!

RC

I might be missing something but I don't think Cruddas' words were remotely controversial, or suggest to anyone he was "religious". Nor do I remember the deputy leadership contest being about religion, nor do I think anyone did or didn't vote for a candidate on the basis of religion.

TGF UKIP

How utterly naive Mr Blackburn to pay any regard to what this pair of snakes say or to the attitudes they strike. Their "deeply religious" convictions didn't do anything to prevent them being king-sized looters of the parliamentary expenses system.

Christian socialism is, as Blair so lavishly demonstrated, a doctrine without sin.

AndyinBrum

So we should look up to people who claim to believe in some kind of entity made up during the bronze age to explain why stuff happens, as people who are worth listening too? We should be treating them as we treat anyone who claims to hear voices, look them up or laugh at them

waywoodwind

clutching at their embezzling straws

terrified because only the BNP insist they are brought before the courts

Laban Tall

"Gordon Brown’s declaration that the poem ‘Invictus’ defines his politics is significant"

Wasn't Invictus quoted in the last will and testament of the Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh ?

"Timothy McVeigh chose the poem Invictus, which means "Unconquerable" in Latin, to be his final statement. He handed a handwritten copy of William Ernest Henley's poem to the prison warden, Harley Lappin, just before his death"