Keir Starmer was in Baku last year when the news broke of the Makin review. The Prime Minister was in the Azerbaijani capital for a climate summit, but the old sins of the Church of England, as detailed in the review, threatened to derail the political news grid.
Starmer, not across the details of horrific historic sexual abuse of children but comfortable enough in knowing right from wrong, refused to back the Archbishop of Canterbury. Within hours, Justin Welby had stepped down.
Apart from this typically pointed yet subtle intervention, this is a prime minister and a No 10 who doesn’t do God. However, the Cabinet and the wider Parliamentary Labour Party is filled with Christians. David Lammy, the foreign secretary, was a choirboy at Peterborough Cathedral, Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, found God at university, Jonathan Reynolds, the Trade Secretary, is a former chair of Christians on the Left. Many others keep their faith private but are known to Christians within the Labour Party.
It should hardly be surprising that a political party that “owes more to Methodism than Marxism” should have a strong religious vein. The Prime Minister, when marking the 75th anniversary of the NHS, attended a service at Westminster Abbey. There, he read from the Book of Revelation. That vision of a new Jerusalem harked back not just to the Bible, but to the mission of the post-war Labour government that created modern Britain.
Clement Attlee, in the 1940s, however, had an unlikely ally which Starmer would do well to remember. William Temple was an Archbishop of Canterbury who revolutionised the Anglican Church, arguably devising the moral underpinnings of the welfare state in the process, and in turn won over his monied congregants to Attlee’s New Jerusalem. Starmer, however, cuts a lonely figure on the domestic stage. As he seeks “renewal”, the Prime Minister needs support for his “change” agenda. Starmer, we are told, wants to rebalance an economy after 14 years of austerity, stagnant wage growth since 2008, and deepening divisions in our ethnic, social and economic fabric.
If, like Attlee, he seeks a friend in Lambeth Palace, Starmer should start taking an interest in the person who will replace Justin Welby. The Prime Minister, despite praising the “difference” churches can do in society prior to the election, seems unaware of quite what a significant difference the Church of England could make. Leaving aside the 33,000 social action groups, including homeless shelters and food banks, the Church has assets that could help that “renewal” agenda. The organisation boasts 200,000 acres of land, held by the Church commissioners, 42 dioceses, and 12,500 parishes. Its commissioners manage a £11.1bn investment fund, using financial muscle to push for progressive acts by corporations. Over a million students attend Church schools and the Church is active across the healthcare and hospice sector.
When Labour came to power it was assumed by many within the Church that these assets could be repurposed for the nation. A push from Starmer to a new Archbishop might unlock the affordable housing the Church has previously hinted at, clean energy on its land and other suspiciously Labour-friendly sounding policies.
And yet, despite the potential, the only people who seem to be interested in the Archbishops’ appointment are the political right. The Church is increasingly a pawn in a wider game of anti-woke warriors.
Danny Kruger, the Tory MP and apparent friend of US Vice President and Catholic convert JD Vance, discussed in the Commons just before the Parliamentary recess, the role of the Church in combatting ‘woke’. He told MPs “woke is a combination of ancient paganism, Christian heresies and the cult of modernism… hostile to the essential objects of our affections and our loyalties: families, communities and nations.”
Welby’s legacy of activist reform in the public square, while attempting (and often failing) to defuse social and moral issues, has left the right determined to not let history repeat itself. Evangelicals, both within parliament and outside it, are increasingly concerned with the social programme pursued by the government. Wes Streeting, although not an Evangelical, joined other Christians in Labour in expressing their unease at assisted suicide legislation. Julia Lopez, Conservative MP for Hornchurch and Upminster, pompously threatened the future Archbishop: “If whomever is appointed as the new Archbishop of Canterbury makes that same choice – intervening and emoting over tough political choices while ducking tougher moral ones – the Church may find even its supporters begin to question its privilege.”
And again in the pages of Paul Marshall’s Spectator, a vicar urged the last Tory government to change the rules to allow for a True Blue candidate to be appointed Archbishop. The writer, Marcus Walker, Rector of the Priory Church of St Bartholomew the Great, London, is also a speaker at such events as the National Conservatism conference. He lamented that bishops have been “developing a worrying uniformity of political and theological opinion – all of a soft-left, soft-evangelical manner.”
After the election last year I was questioned by a lobbyist about a client’s interest in a certain bishop. What were their prospects of elevation to the Archbishop’s Chair, I was asked. Wrong gender and wrong background, I confidently said. The lobbyist didn’t seem so sure. After all, the candidate had their client on their side.
Despite the 2007 rule changes by Gordon Brown, which removed the right of prime ministers to intervene in individual appointments, there is still ample room for influencing the crown nominations commission. The commission, which tells the prime minister which potential archbishop to recommend to the King, is chaired by a prime ministerial appointment with the prime minister’s appointments secretary as a non-voting member.
The Commission has already agreed a shortlist for potential nominees, but being chaired by the former head of MI5, the identities are unsurprisingly secret. A final meeting in September is expected to decide, leaving ample time for Starmer to put a thumb on any scales.
Starmer, however, has shown zero interest in intervening. The Church could hardly have missed the long delay in appointing a second Church estates commissioner after Labour’s victory. The role, usually reserved for an outgoing doyenne or respected statesman, was given to Marsha de Cordova. With a few very notable exceptions, the Ecclesiastical committee, designed to review the Church’s internal laws, seems populated with those with little history of intellectual rigour.
Yet No 10’s archetypal reticence at politicking is storing up problems for the government in the future. The Church is not simply a useful landowner with money to spare. It is a moral asset – or powerful critic. As the Tories latterly discovered, an Archbishop of Canterbury willing to take to the airwaves to decry policy announcements with the same alacrity should send a shiver down the No 10 comms operation. A crackdown on asylum? Assisted suicide finally delivered? Aid budget cut? All of these seem perfect issues for an angry Archbishop with a soapbox and 16,000 parishes to command.
Starmer, however, has an option – appoint your friends or your enemies will.
[See also: The race for Lambeth Palace]
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