by Eliot Wilson, The Critic
Andy Burnham’s religious background has a subtle but deep historical significance
If Andy Burnham becomes Prime Minister next month, he will become Britain’s first Roman Catholic premier, in any meaningful sense. Boris Johnson was baptised a Catholic but confirmed in the Church of England, while Tony Blair converted to Catholicism only after he had left office.
That is not to portray Burnham as especially devout. He attends Mass only very occasionally, and once told a journalist, “to use a Scouse phrase, we don’t lick the altar steps”. What sets him apart is not just that he was raised a Catholic, but that he would be the first Prime Minister who had grown up instinctively and unconsciously steeped in Catholic worship and a Catholic culture.
As a young man, Burnham used to tell people that the three institutions which had shaped him were Everton Football Club, the Labour Party and the Catholic Church, “in that order”. It could be dismissed as the kind of glib, matey response I hate, but it is also revealing. It represents Catholicism not as a matter of doctrine so much as community and culture.
Morgan Phillips, Labour’s post-War General Secretary, said that the party owed more to Methodism than to Marxism, and Keir Hardie, Arthur Henderson and Philip Snowden had been Methodists; Labour also drew strength from the wider Nonconformist traditions like Baptism (Harold Wilson, Jim Callaghan, Aneurin Bevan’s paternal family) and Congregationalism.