Is Tim Farron prepared to defend any of his beliefs?
by Melanie McDonagh, Spectator:
Are there any matters of principle, do you reckon, that Tim Farron isn’t prepared to give up on under pressure from a television journalist? After caving under repeated questioning from Channel 4’s Cathy Newman (how brave, Cathy!) to declare that he does not, in fact, consider homosexual acts to be sinful, he’s now had to conform again, this time on abortion. In an interview with ITV, he said he strongly believed that ‘when procedures takes place, it should be safe and it should be legal,’ and supported the law as it stands. Pressed on his personal view, he said: ‘Again, what one believes in one’s personal private faith is just that.’ A spokesman has also made clear that Farron supports a woman’s right to abortion.
What’s monstrous of course is that he’s being subjected to this kind of interrogation; it’s a kind of field sport for interviewers to torment Tim Farron about faith and morals, a bit like grilling Labour frontbenchers about the cost of their manifesto commitments. What fun to watch him squirm, and get a paid-up working-class Christian to conform to the standard secularist take on these things. But he doesn’t put up much of a fight, does he? He wouldn’t do terribly well, I reckon, if he was one of those Middle Eastern Christians being tormented by IS, or a sixteenth-century Catholic being asked to declare that Henry VIII is in fact head of the church.
Related Posts
Tags
Share This
