Really rather odd this:
For Blair, socialist and Christian values reinforce each other and
overlap. He believes in the fraternity and equality of humanity under
God. He believes in the parable of the good samaritan. ‘I am my
brother’s keeper and I will not walk by the other side,’ he told the
1995 Labour party conference, shortly before his minders told him not
to talk in religious terms. His Christianity and socialism are
suffused; they are one and the same, softening one and making the other
practical. It is what makes him a Labour man; there’s an invisible
umbilical cord that links him to even the likes of Dennis Skinner.
Thus
the gulf between Blair and Thatcher. What inspired her about Victorian
England was its Samuel Smiles commitment to self-help. If Blair
lionises Smiles, he has never let on to me. In Victorian terms, he
comes from the same Christian Anglican reformist tradition as Lord
Shaftesbury, who campaigned to stop children from working in mines and
factories, or William Wilberforce. This is the root of his politics;
why, for all his concessions to capitalism, the markets and the rich,
he sides with the left.
Given the historical connotations of the two forms of Christianity, it’s really very odd indeed to be praising a High Church Anglican as against a Methodist from a left liberal point of view.
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