A misguided election briefing
by Marcus Walker, Sounding Board:
The Church must recognise there are Christians on both the left and right of politics
You may have missed this as the general election campaign veered between waves of tragedy and farce but the Church of England’s Diocese of Salisbury decided to issue a formal “briefing” on the issues of the election which, while being neither lachrymose nor funny, was certainly depressing.
It tries to be a briefing document for anyone in the diocese wanting “to Pray your Part” and it explores many of the issues being discussed in the election. It does not explore them in a neutral way.
Questions it encourages people to ask of their candidates include: “Will you eliminate the concept of illegality of those who enter the UK by other non-traditional means?”; “Will you consider abolishing short-term sentences, those of one year and under?”; and “What is your policy on fossil fuel exploration? Will your party pledge not to issue new licences for new gas and oil fields?”
We could spend a while discussing the relative merits or demerits of these particular proposals but the basic reality is that there was not a single question that was right-coded.
No question (for example) explored whether migration should be reduced from its record highs or whether low growth could be attributed to having the highest proportion of GDP taken in tax since the Attlee government.
This is not to get into the actual questions. The briefing concerns me because there is not the hint of a suggestion that it’s worth considering what questions a person on the right might care about.
Actually, it’s worse: there’s not the hint of a suggestion that a person on the right is worth caring about.
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