Chief Executive Andrea Williams comments on the message sent by Sir Keir Starmer’s cabinet appointments
In his first speech as Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer said that the government would be marked by pragmatism and service:
“…We can make a start today with the simple acknowledgement that public service is a privilege.”
“From now on, you have a government unburdened by doctrine, guided only by a determination to serve your best interests…”
He is suggesting that serving the nation’s best interests requires a government to lay down its beliefs at the altar of ‘whatever works’.
The notion that ‘doctrine is a burden’ is itself a doctrine. Being charitable, we should take the Prime Minister’s statement less literally and say that he is simply emphasising ‘action’.
Labour is keen to present itself as taking a managerial approach to the duties of government.
After his first cabinet meeting, Starmer said:
“I also discussed mission delivery…how we would put into action the plans that we have set out in our manifesto…and that we will have mission delivery boards to drive through the change that we need, and that I will be chairing those boards to make sure that it’s clear to everyone that they are my priority in government…”
Similarly, Labour has dropped the Conservatives’ language of ‘levelling up’ with Jim McMahon claiming:
“It is a reshaping of the department. It is a refocus, but frankly it is also just grown-up politics.”
New Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy gave the same impression claiming the “era of culture wars is over” in her first speech.
All these comments and more are aimed at giving the impression that the new government will govern in everyone’s best interests. It implies that the previous Conservative administration was pushing divisive issues in its own narrow interests. By contrast, Labour is presenting itself as grown up, responsible and serious.
There are many ways that the previous Conservative government was ‘not serious’. When Matt Hancock, then-Health Secretary, spent the Covid lockdown he was in charge of breaking both his marriage vows and his social distancing regulations, by having an affair with his aide, he set the tone for many more revelations of unfaithfulness, immaturity and sleaze.
We can hope and pray that Labour’s leaders will be much better on this front. And indeed that they will be effective in achieving many of their aims.
But do their actions match their words?
Gareth Roberts mentioned one of the problems with this language in the Spectator:
“As long as the aesthetic of sensibleness, competence, ‘seriousness’ is there, you don’t have to actually be any of those things – just look as if you are.”
While it’s obviously far too soon to judge the outcomes of Labour’s policies, we can look at some of the Prime Minister’s cabinet appointments and ask ourselves just how serious they are.
Anneliese Dodds, Minister of State for Women and Equalities
Many commentators have picked up that Starmer has appointed a minister for women, Anneliese Dodds, who doesn’t seem to be able to define what a woman is.
Tom Harris wrote in the Telegraph:
“Before the general election and during the campaign, Starmer sounded as if he was edging towards a more positive position on women’s rights, visibly moving on from the days in which he criticised one of his own MPs for suggesting that only women have cervixes and even agreeing with Tony Blair (though not his female colleague who said the same thing) that “men have penises and women have vaginas”.
If there were cynics who thought this was no more than a public relations tactic, an attempt to try to straddle two opposing positions – that “transwomen are women” (as the Stonewall catechism tells us) and “women have the right to female-only spaces” – they look to have been proven right by Starmer’s decision to appoint Anneliese Dodds as women and equalities minister.”
‘What is a woman?’ is not simply a gotcha question to catch out politicians. It is a very simple one that even young children can give an adequate answer to.
‘Ideology’ doesn’t just mean a system of beliefs that someone holds. One definition of ideology is “thinking or theorizing of an idealistic, abstract, or impractical nature; fanciful speculation”. In this sense, there could be little more ideological than the idea that some males can be women.
Far from being grown up, gender ideology reverts us all to the state of toddlers who don’t yet understand the difference between men and women.
The appointment of Anneleise Dodds is not serious.
Dame Diana Johnson, Minister of State in the Home Office
Sir Keir Starmer has also appointed Dame Diana Johnson as a Minister of State in the Home Office.
In the last parliament, she pushed for the decriminalisation of abortion up to birth, meaning (for example) that a 30+ week unborn child, who could be delivered and would likely survive outside the womb, could instead be killed by his or her mother, via dangerous and falsely-obtained abortion pills, with no consequences.
The Home Office’s principal duty is to protect people. How can someone who cannot recognise and protect life be given power and influence there?
David Lammy and other ministers
Commentators have pointed out other appointments that suggest this is not simply a cabinet of ‘serious’ managerial types.
Gareth Roberts writes:
“These sensible, calm, unburdened by doctrine public-service minded people, lest we forget, include new Foreign Secretary David Lammy, who not many years ago calmly and sensibly compared the Tories’ ERG group to the Nazis. In fact, when challenged on this insane remark he doubled down, saying it ‘wasn’t strong enough’.”
Melanie Phillips also points to Lammy’s views on Israel as well as those of other ministers:
“Once upon a time, Lammy was sympathetic to Israel. Now he is a foe. He has repeated what he said before the election, that Labour supports the request by the International Criminal Court prosecutor, Karim Khan, for arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Israel’s defence minister Yoav Gallant — and that if these Israelis came to the UK after such warrants were issued, Britain would arrest them.
“…The Lord Chancellor and Justice Secretary, Shabina Mahmood, is a long-standing supporter of the Boycott Sanctions and Divestment movement (BDS) aimed at the destruction of Israel.”
Dig beneath the surface and you’ll see that many of Starmer’s cabinet appointments are not the competent pragmatists they are billed as but ideologues. It’s just that their strongly-held beliefs are perhaps closer to the views of the captured institutions. Their extremism and lack-of-seriousness happens to line up with those of senior journalists, judges and other ‘cultural elites’.
By contrast, look at the reaction to former Home Secretary Suella Braverman for saying she opposed Progress Pride flags and the mutilation of children. Senior ITV journalist Paul Brand called this “a blistering attack on pro-LGBT Tories”.
Doctrine is inescapable
A government cannot serve or seek the best for its people unless it has a vision for flourishing. Some Labour ministers, as well as their policies, clearly do not value life, family and freedom.
Competence and pragmatism can only go so far; if they are used to serve God, they can do much good, but used in the service of evil, incompetence would be better.
But in the end, it is following God’s pattern for our lives that ‘just works’. As Christians, we must be clear that living according to his creation pattern is good news for all of us.
None of the main parties in the United Kingdom has a vision for our nation that recognises the need for Jesus Christ at the heart of society. I increasingly wonder how many within the Church do.
The change starts with us. We must be the kind of people who faithfully believe and lead the lives God has called us to. People of holiness, courage and prayer. Christians who seek justice, speak truth and bring the hope of Jesus Christ to the heart of society.
Let’s keep standing and trusting our sovereign, loving God to do what is right.
