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Tony Blair photo: European Union, CC BY 4.0 licence. Others: public domain.
Tony Blair photo: European Union, CC BY 4.0 licence. Others: public domain.

The Faith of Our Leaders: Blair

Tuesday March 21 2023

In the last of the series, Adam McPherson examines the faith influence on Tony Blair


“We don't do God.”

One wonders how many articles have been written attributing the personal faith of Tony Blair to this remark made by Alistair Campbell, New Labour's Director of Communications. Furthermore, how many of those articles have misconstrued the intent behind these words to paint Blair and New Labour as a party removed from Christianity?

Mark Vickers' analysis of Tony Blair's faith in his book, God in Number 10, confirms that Blair very much 'did' God. And Blair did not hide from this, in his autobiography, he wrote: “I have always been more interested in religion than politics”. For Blair, religion was “something living … about the world around me rather than a special one-to-one relationship with a remote being on high.”

The journalist Peter Oborne wrote that Blair was 'the most religious Prime Minister since Gladstone'. Blair thought carefully about Christianity, coming to the conclusion that faith was about action. Blair's framing of religion as a force for change reflects his Labour predecessor Clement Attlee's opinions. To Attlee and to Blair, religion wasn't solely about an individualistic preparation for the next life. Both believed that Christianity should affect change, improving the lives of people in this world.

Understanding Attlee's faith is more challenging than understanding Blair's as the former was more circumspect about what he believed. What Attlee was keen to emphasise was that Christianity shouldn't be used as a tool to force the poverty-stricken to accept their suffering in exchange for a better life after death. Blair held similar convictions. In 1996, he wrote in the Sunday Telegraph that “Christianity had led him to oppose the narrow view of self-interest that Conservatism represents”. This statement reads in stark contrast to the individualism of Thatcherism and her belief that the most fundamental virtue of Christianity was freedom.

Many have commented on the similarities between Blair and Thatcher. Both led at a time when Britain was becoming increasingly secularised while harnessing the story-telling potential of Christianity to promote their political ideologies. But where Thatcher's faith has been treated with a degree of cynicism, Blair's survives relatively intact. For Vickers, “the sincerity of [Blair's] faith was undeniable.” Biographer after biographer has made mention of the way Blair's faith shaped his politics. He wrote openly about Christianity when he was the Labour leader in Opposition, he used the construct of good and evil to tell the electorate about his policy-making decisions but once he became Prime Minister, he became more cautious about speaking openly about what he believed.

Campbell's comment about New Labour not 'doing' God did not mean that the party was full of atheists, as he later clarified, it referred to the party's fear that speaking openly about faith might damage their electoral hopes. This must have been challenging for Blair, and interviews from his time as Prime Minister demonstrate how carefully he sought to tread the line between what he wanted to say and what his advisers believed would be palatable to the people.

Upon leaving office, Blair spoke freely about religion, making cohesion between the world's disparate faith systems a cornerstone of his work post-Premiership. He converted to Catholicism after having attended Catholic Mass for 25 years. When asked why he did not convert during his time as Prime Minister, Blair stated that he has been too busy at the time and it would have been an unnecessary distraction when he had many other issues to deal with.

What he doesn't mention was his wariness about his faith being used against him. At the time, Blair was still working towards a power sharing settlement in Northern Ireland. To convert to Catholicism may have undermined his efforts to convince the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) to agree to any forthcoming deal.

Additionally, Blair was unwilling to blindingly obey Catholic doctrine. He reduced the age of consent for homosexuals to 16, saw through the Civil Partnership Act of 2004 and voted against the pro-life lobby. He questioned the Catholic Church's teachings on homosexuality and said that 'prayer did not abnegate the need for the use of human reason'. Blair also defended the beliefs of other faiths at times of extraordinary geopolitical change. In October 2001, he addressed the Labour Party Conference saying: “It is time the West confronted its ignorance of Islam. Jews, Muslims and Christians are all children of Abraham.” It is hard to imagine a leader of this age making such a bold declaration.

Like many of us, Blair saw faith as a “living and growing belief, not stuck in one time in history.” Christianity, for Blair, was about change. He remarked off the record during his Sunday Telegraph interview that 'Jesus was a moderniser', a statement remarkably similar to Attlee's more than 50 years before. He had a complicated relationship with established orthodoxies of any kind. According to John Burton, Blair was 'his own man'. He could believe that 'politicians should never use their ethical views to obstruct action or change' while also acknowledging that 'there is no conceivable way that [religion] wouldn't affect your politics'. Perhaps his faith was simply another manifestation of 'the third way' that Blair promoted.


The Faith of our Leaders: exploring the beliefs of the UK's most famous political figures

Thatcher

Attlee

Churchill

Introduction


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