Nick Hood of Bournemouth: Clegg's Conference Speech:

In another part of the blogosphere there are debates on 'pirate theology'. In Bournemouth this week Nick Clegg gave us pirate politics. Perhaps drawing inspiration from Jack Sparrow, and the romance and appeal of the outsider, Clegg sought to put clear amber water between the Libdems and the 'red and blue' tankers of his rivals. At the same time, he made an audacious raid on their rhetoric.

Key Lines

"Let me tell you why I want to be Prime Minister"

"The beginning of real change in Britain"

"There is less to him than meets the eye" (on David Cameron)

Key Ideas

This was a policy-heavy speech, in contrast to last year which focused more on principles and overt attacks on Brown and Cameron. It could have been a manifesto launch speech. But the top two key concepts were a smash and grab raid on Labour and Conservative:

- Change: the word was used 39 times, lifted straight from the Tories campaigning tagline, but Clegg's argument was that Cameron offered 'fake change' whilst the Libdems' is real.

- Fairness: the words fair/unfair used 15 times, lifted straight from Gordon Browns conference speech last year, where 'fairness' was the repeated mantra.

Having raided the clothes of both parties, Clegg then sought to paint himself as the champion of the poor, against the bonus-earning rich and their tax loopholes, the Robin Hood of the Recession. Nick will go into battle for ordinary people and your taxes, for young people and your jobs, for children and your class sizes. Armed with a bow and arrow and Vince Cable (no more Trident), Clegg's charge to the polling booth has begun.

Various bits of libdem philosophy came through: smaller state, individual freedom (scrapping of ID cards), environmentalism etc. But in his conclusion, Clegg sought to paint the LibDems as the natural heirs of Blair, the people upon whom all the hopes of 1997 now rested.

Much of the rest was positioning: talking of 'the old red-blue politics', listing several areas where both main parties had failed, and talking of the Libdem ability to stand up for their principles and for the ordinary person.

Policies:

Almost too many to list. Here are some of the specific policy commitments made during the 50m speech -

- Begin talks with Taliban
- 150 fewer MPs
- change the electoral system
- cut defence spending
- no replacement for Trident
- end the Child Trust Fund
- independent review of public sector pensions
- young people will be found a job or training within 90 days of losing a job.
- Cancel the VAT cut
- 10,000 more university places, 50,000 more college places
- Paid internships with £55 a week
- 800,000 placements for students.
- Classes of 15 for 5-7 year olds (inconsistent – Clegg spoke of the earliest years being crucial, so why wait till kids are 5?)
- Raise Income Tax threshold to £10,000
- More tax on the richest.
- Cancel ID cards
- 10,000 more police on the streets

- Elected House of Lords

Comments:

- It was odd that Nick Clegg began the speech with, effectively, a separate statement on Afghanistan. This seemed to have nothing to do with anything else he was saying, and the speech proper only began once he'd finished this section.

- The 'less to him than meets the eye' line on Cameron has something going for it. The Conservatives have still to come under proper scrutiny, they have bobbed to the top of the polls without very much effort, and very little in the way of concrete policies.

- No engagement here with crime levels, family breakdown, and the need for a change of culture and values, most of his solutions seem to be economic or legal. Nothing about the NHS either, which, considering how much money it hoovers up, is remarkable. But that's my hobby horse of the week at the moment....

- There's also nothing which challenges the basis of debt-driven consumer capitalism, apart from a couple of warning shots at bankers. Lots of small to medium ideas here, but I would have expected something more radical. Go back to Sherwood Forest and prepare for government? Or is Robin more effective as an outsider?

Faith in public: Blair and Blears, Nurses and Curses

Tony Blairs speech at the Obama prayer breakfast makes interesting reading:

Today, religion is under attack from without and from within. From within, it is corroded by extremists who use their faith as a means of excluding the other. I am what I am in opposition to you. If you do not believe as I believe, you are a lesser human being.

From without, religious faith is assailed by an increasingly aggressive secularism, which derides faith as contrary to reason and defines faith by conflict. Thus do the extreme believers and the aggressive non-believers come together in unholy alliance.

And yet, faith will not be so easily cast. For billions of people, faith motivates, galvanises, compels and inspires, not to exclude but to embrace; not to provoke conflict but to try to do good. This is faith in action. You can see it in countless local communities where those from churches, mosques, synagogues and temples, tend the sick, care for the afflicted, work long hours in bad conditions to bring hope to the despairing and salvation to the lost. You can see it in the arousing of the world’s conscience to the plight of Africa.

There are a million good deeds done every day by people of faith. These are those for whom, in the parable of the sower, the seed fell on good soil and yielded sixty or a hundredfold.
What inspires such people?

Ritual or doctrine or the finer points of theology? No.

it's a speech that could be delivered in America without apology, but Blair hints at the difficulties with faith and public life in the UK

I do not mean by this to blur the correct distinction between the realms of religious and political authority. In Britain we are especially mindful of this. I recall giving an address to the country at a time of crisis. I wanted to end my words with “God bless the British people”. This caused complete consternation. Emergency meetings were convened. The system was aghast. Finally, as I sat trying to defend my words, a senior civil servant said, with utter distain: “Really, Prime Minister, this is not America you know.”

do read the whole thing, very good.


Hazel Blears spoke to a new Debt initiative set up by the Evangelical Alliance, aiming to co-ordinate and resource Christian responses to the debt crunch/recession. She quoted the Bible a bit, and promised to listen more to Christian groups. A new 'charter' is promised to give local authorities/funding sources more encouragement to fund welfare work offered by Christian groups, but there's concern that it might restrict what we can actually do.


Anglican leaders, including African bishops have called for Robert Mugabe to step down. If only political leaders in Africa were just as forthright.


It's utterly bizarre that using the word 'golliwog' in a private conversation gets you the sack, whilst abusing the Prime Minister for his race and disability at a public event doesn't.


The Somerset nurse suspended after offering to pray with a patient has been reinstated. The statement from her NHS trust makes it clear that they weren't happy with what she did, but recognises that spiritual support is part of patient care:

"We feel we were right to investigate the concerns from people about Caroline’s actions...

However, we are keenly aware of the importance of an individual’s spiritual belief, and we recognise that Caroline felt that she was acting in the best interests of her patients. For some people of faith, prayer is seen as an integral part of health care and the healing process....

It is acceptable to offer spiritual support as part of care when the patient asks for it.
But for nurses, whose principal role is giving nursing care, the initiative lies with the patient and not with the nurse."

New NHS Guidelines, published at the beginning of January, state that attempting to 'preach' your religion, or expressing particular points of view consistent with your faith, could be interpreted as harassment. The guidlines are worryingly vague. There is no distinction drawn between 'preaching' faith and simply telling folk what's good about it.


The Good Childhood Report, featured in the media earlier this week, has now been published, summary here. Dave Walker has put together a good collection of links on this today.


Worth Abbey is now holding Monastic Taster Weekends, for people interested in exploring a calling to be a monk.

More on most of these in my latest Touching Base column at the Wardman Wire.

Labour Minister "Faith communities offer a rich resource"

It appears that Labour is now prepared to 'do God', following the departure of devout Mr Blair to sort out the Middle East (that went well). As Ruth Gledhill reports, Stephen Timms (financial secretary to the Treasury) has given a major speech on how the government can work with faith groups. Here's a bit of it

What I want to argue today is that the faith communities offer a rich resource of hopefulness which, in progressive politics, we need to tap into and draw upon. The faith communities have not always been seen as the natural allies of progressive politics. Indeed, in the United States, there has been a powerful alliance between Christian organisations and conservatism. We saw that alliance loosening with the election of Barack Obama.

Faith communities have a great deal to offer us, not least in their resource of hopefulness, as we build a new politics based on hope to respond effectively to the challenges we face. They can form the basis for a broad coalition of hope.

There is a twofold challenge here. A challenge to progressive politicians to show they recognise faith-based perspectives and contributions as valid and mainstream, rather than irrelevant and marginal. That means recognising that faith cannot be relegated to the private sphere – and as IPPR has already argued – addressing faith literacy in central and local government, so that officials can deal intelligently with input from faith communities. And it means thinking hard about identity, recognising the part faith plays, and getting beyond ‘We don’t do God’.


And a challenge to faith communities and their members. To recognise that, in democracy, people are entitled to hold strongly divergent views. It is right to work with people you disagree strongly with on very important subjects, in order to make real in a community the hope which faith instils.

full speech here. The whole thing is worth a read, and not just because he gives a free plug to Street Pastors. Of course, 'he would say that wouldn't he', being a Christian, but the point is that Labour ministers haven't been saying this sort of thing until quite recently.

The timing is interesting: with Dubya leaving the White House, Timms talks about faith groups working with the progressive agenda rather than against it, and Obama becomes Exhibit A in this regard. He also cites Desmond Tutu, Tom Wright and Pope Benedict, as well as several examples of faith communities making a practical difference on the ground.

There are also some headlines, on page 2 of the report, from a Tearfund survey suggesting a strong rise in church attendance last year - no sign of it on their main website as yet.