How Labour became the nasty party
by Giles Fraser, UnHerd:
Social justice has become a form of persecution.
The morning after the deputy leader of the Labour Party called a number of her fellow citizens “scum”, the leader of the Labour Party spoke at a church service in Brighton, the theme of which was “love thy neighbour”.
As an atheist, and as someone who had to apologise the last time he went to church after its leaders were accused of carrying out “exorcisms” on gay people, you might have thought this would be a tough gig. And yet it wasn’t.
The theme was deliberately chosen so he could reflect on the way local communities had pulled together during the pandemic: “One of the things I’ve been profoundly struck by in the last 18 months is the fact that people have looked out for each other in a way I haven’t seen in my lifetime.” And he thanked people of faith for playing their part in all this. “I may not believe in God, but I do believe in faith,” as he once explained. Christians, he said on Sunday, were the Labour Party’s “moral compass”.
But the “love thy neighbour” story is a good deal more morally challenging than Keir Starmer seems to realise. For it is not a moral tale designed to celebrate social togetherness; it is supposed to challenge the listener to think about who their neighbour might be. And this is the message that appears to be lost on Angela Rayner.
After all, the point of the Good Samaritan story is that the audience hated Samaritans. They were “scum”. Too often this story is simply taken to be a heart-warming moral tale of helping others in a time of need — hence Starmer’s words about our coming together in the pandemic, with references to food banks and so on.
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