Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Political activists who behave like zealots will do no good at all

The election debate so far has included a fair bit of to-ing and fro-ing over whether religion has a place in politics and whether religious politicians have to spend significant portions of interviews talking about their views on what other people get up to in bed. But one striking feature of all political debate is how many of its participants behave like religious zealots without even realising it. 

Media vicar Reverend Richard Coles yesterday tweeted that he’d spoken to a friend who planned to switch from Labour to the Conservative, rather than the Lib Dems, as Coles might have expected. The replies to this message were rather instructive. A number of people thought this voter simply could not exist. Another said in threatening tones that they hoped this friend would never need the NHS, which allowed Coles to explain that his pal was in fact an NHS consultant. This led to more people wondering whether this friend was real, suggesting they probably did a lot of private work on the side, or accusing them point blank of being ‘self-serving’.

As a man of the cloth, Coles is probably quite used to being told that his friends don’t exist. But what he will also be quite acquainted with is the certainty that some of his fellow worshippers feel about those who do not share their faith. It is quite common for fervently religious people to believe that others are either in some way a bit depraved or walking in the darkness, waiting for their eyes to be opened to the Truth. There is rarely a possibility that non-believers may have thought things through for themselves – and certainly no possibility that they might have given it a darn sight more thought than the religious person hectoring them. 

The same certainty afflicts some in politics; often those who worship their political ideology as though it were an infallible God – and who believe, as some religious people do, that their beliefs mark them out as somehow superior to others.

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