Article

Character

Ethics

General Election 24

Politics

8 July 2024

7 min read

The problems Keir Starmer faces are not just political - they are spiritual

His greatest battle may be the fight for our trust.

Graham Tomlin

Graham is the Director of the Centre for Cultural Witness and a former Bishop of Kensington.

The beginning of a new government is a bit like the beginning of a new football season. Nothing yet has gone wrong. The future seems full of promise. The grim memory of last season is in the past. Hope is in the air.

Keir Starmer, in his early speeches as Prime Minister, sound some familiar notes. He speaks of “a weariness in the heart of a nation, a draining away of the hope, the spirit, the belief in a better future that we need to move forward together.” While not quite Margaret Thatcher’s invoking the spirit of St Francis in 1979, Sir Keir was reaching for something deeper than the practicalities of politics, for bigger themes, more resonant ideas. Yet there was one note that caught my eye, not just in these speeches but also before that in the election campaign – a theme that cropped up often – the need for trust.

On the day after the election, when the confirmation came through that Labour had won, in an early morning speech to supporters delivered at the Tate Modern, he said this: “Make no mistake, this is the greatest test for politics in this era – the fight for trust is the battle that defines our age.”

Keir Starmer has put his finger on something. As Martin Kettle in the Guardian put it, “Whether you approve of Keir Starmer’s election strategy or not, it is a matter of observable fact that he has centred it upon the regaining of trust.” The Labour manifesto claimed that “over the last 14 years, trust in politics has been shattered.” It went on: “sleaze and scandal have eroded trust. Just as corrosive has been the inability of politicians to keep promises made to the British people.” Among the main reasons the Conservatives were roundly rejected were the actions of Boris Johnson’s inner circle, who partied in Downing Street while families were avoiding each other and staying away from their parents’ funerals (I know – I was one of them). I'm not sure that he and his party realised how corrosive and damaging that was to public trust in government and the Conservatives in particular. Perhaps now they know.

Trust is built when politicians keep their promises and deliver what they say they will over the months and years. It wilts in the presence of political in-fighting, bets placed by election candidates, or unfulfilled boasts to save the NHS.

Hope and trust are vital things for human life. We cannot live without them. And it’s not just in politics. The Church of England has had its own troubles with trust in recent times. A report, debated at General Synod, lamented the lack of trust in the Church, setting it in the context of a general lack of trust in institutions in our society.

Starmer understands that trust has to be earned. “This lack of trust,” he said outside No 10 Downing Street, “can only be healed by actions not words.” And trust takes time. Trust is built when politicians keep their promises and deliver what they say they will over the months and years. It wilts in the presence of political in-fighting, bets placed by election candidates, or unfulfilled boasts to save the NHS.

However, to be fair to politicians, trust has not only to be earned, it also has to be given. And we have become less trusting as a nation. The IPSOS Trust Index reveals that politicians, the media, bankers and advertising executives are our least trusted institutions. An ONS survey in 2023 revealed that trust in political parties, the media, local government, and international organisations was at its lowest level for years. A survey of over 36,000 interviews across 28 countries revealed “a world ensnared in a vicious cycle of distrust, fuelled by a growing lack of faith in media and government. Through disinformation and division, these two institutions are feeding the cycle and exploiting it for commercial and political gain.”

To break what it called the ‘cycle of distrust’, it recommended demonstrating tangible progress, focussing on long-term thinking and providing credible information. Yet I wonder if the problem lies deeper than that.

Trust is a habit. It is like a muscle. The more you exercise it, the more it tends to grow. Yet the paradox of trust is that without trustworthy objects in our lives, it becomes hard to exercise that muscle. A child growing up with parents who regularly deceive and lie to him, promising but not showing up to sports events, hinting at presents that never actually turn up, quickly learns that trust doesn't work. The disappointment is too great to bear. Cynicism works better. He learns to take everything with a pinch of salt, to be wary of promises, and that a guarded attitude where the default position is not to believe is a safer option.

In a broken and fallen world, trust is a fragile thing. Some people and institutions will be more trustworthy than others, but even the best will get things wrong...

The problem politicians face is that politics, as they say, is the art of the possible, and along the way, whether due to financial constraints, or the need to do deals with allies, political opponents, or (more likely for Starmer, given the size of his majority) within your own party, compromises have to be made, promises ‘re-aligned’ if not actually broken, which is where distrust starts to creep in. Nick Clegg famously made a promise that his party would never increase student fees, yet in the cut and thrust of actually having to govern, he had to break that promise, and his version of the Liberal Democrat party never recovered.

A little while ago, I interviewed Esau McCaulley, an African-American theologian and New York Times columnist with a fascinating backstory. His childhood in the backstreets of Alabama was complicated by an intermittently absent and unreliable father, whose promises were broken again and again. Esau learnt to approach the world with wariness, burned by broken promises. Yet somehow, through the determination of a good mother and the steady influence of a local church, he learnt to trust again. As he put it: “others must own their scepticism, and I my trust, both of which arise out of deeply held convictions about the nature of reality.”

Like Starmer, McCaulley has put his finger on something. The question of whether or not we believe ultimate reality can be trusted lies beneath our cultural tendencies towards trust or mistrust. Ultimately, trust needs a transcendent object. In a broken and fallen world, trust is a fragile thing. Some people and institutions will be more trustworthy than others, but even the best will get things wrong and when those people and institutions that we have trusted implicitly let us down, it is the hardest fall of all.

Judaism and Christianity, in particular the latter, have made a big deal about faith and trust. The Bible is not a list of pithy, timeless aphorisms, but consists of a story across time – and as we saw, trust takes time. One of the central characteristics of the God of the Christian Bible is faithfulness across time. It tells the story of a God who makes a world with a regularity that can be trusted, where the sun rises and sets, light follows darkness, where the fluctuations of a dynamic planet are contained - hence the symbol of the rainbow as a sign that God will not ultimately destroy his creation. When the creation is disrupted by a primeval act of rebellion by the very species that was intended to care for the creation, God promises to send a rescuer from out of that very species to redeem it, a promise fulfilled in Jesus Christ. It then promises the as-yet-unfulfilled hope that the world will one day be healed and brought to its fullness. We do not yet see that, but on the basis of promises previously kept, we are invited to trust. The narrative arc of the Bible is a story that is designed to inculcate trust.

Contemporary spirituality does not have such a focus on faithfulness in time. An appeal to ‘find our spiritual centre’, to ‘accept the present moment’ may bring a temporary sense of peace and serenity. It doesn’t rebuild trust. Because trust, as Keir Starmer has recognised, is built slowly over time by trusting in someone who proves themselves trustworthy.

Having such a transcendent horizon of faith tends to build the muscle of trust. It turns the dial from the default of distrust to that of trust. It becomes just a little easier to handle the disappointments of broken promises in this world because ultimate reality can be trusted.

All this tells us that the deepest problems we face as the new government begins its work are not just political - they are spiritual. I for one hope and pray that Keir Starmer's government will be as trustworthy as he hopes it will be. It would be wonderful if they can rebuild a sense of trust in politics. But there are limits to what politics and politicians can do. They cannot ultimately heal our hearts from the damage done to our ability to trust. Only a faithful God can do that.

Starmer is, well known as an atheist. In seeking to build trust, he has hit the right note. In identifying trust as the key issue of the day, he is perhaps unknowingly reaching out for the God he doesn’t believe in, but who builds trust in those who do.

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Comment

General Election 24

Politics

20 June 2024

4 min read

What small boats tell us about belonging

Do I belong to these politics? And do these politics belong to me?

George Pitcher

George is a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and an Anglican priest.

A grainy surveillance picture of an rusty boat overloaded with people

A small boat overloaded with migrants.

BBC.

Our son used to say that “home is where the dogs are”, as he was greeted by them. It’s a variation on “home is where the heart is”. Either way, it means that a sense of home isn’t just about place or geography, so much as family and, relatedly, the familiar.

If home were simply an address, candidates in an election campaign wouldn’t bother knocking on doors to meet people. To be familiar is to meet people where they are, circumstantially as well as literally on their doorstep.

To date, the solution to the refugee crisis has been to “stop the boats”, as if our principal concern is with rubber dinghies. We’ve still not addressed the people in those boats; we’re not familiar with them, their circumstances and motivations.

I’d hazard a guess that a common desire among those who flee persecution and mortal danger is something else associated with familiarity – a sense of belonging.

The refugee belongs nowhere, until she or he reaches a new and safe home. Indeed, all of us know we’re home only when we’re somewhere we belong.

Somewheres are rooted in place and community; Anywheres are footloose and and educationally privileged. To which I would add the global category of migrants, who are Nowheres.

This is Refugee Week (17-23 June) and Thursday 20 June is World Refugee Day. It’s theme this year is “Our Home”, which is why I started this column on the nature of familiarity and belonging.

Out of which arise two questions: Do I belong to this country? And does this country belong to me? The first is fairly straightforward in a practical sense – I have a British passport and pay my taxes here, so yes I do. The second question is more complex, more of which in a moment.

When it comes to sovereign governments, the questions move from first to third person. Do you belong to (or in) this country and does this country belong to you? Again, the first question is about paperwork. The second, however, becomes crucially about exclusivity.

Exclusive ownership reaches its abhorrent nadir in a BBC2 documentary this week titled Dead Calm: Killing in the Med?, which provides evidence that the Greek coastguard has been employing masked vigilantes to cast adrift landed refugees, including women and children, in international waters and, in some cases, to throw migrants overboard to their deaths. A story told alongside the capsizing, through incompetence or otherwise, of the rust-tub Adriana, in which more than 600 migrants drowned a year ago.

These are matters for international law. But it shows where treating migrants like cargo, rather than people, takes us. It’s a mindset that could start with repellent (in both senses) wave machines, as considered by a former UK home secretary.

None of which arises if the criteria of belonging are applied. Former Prospect editor David Goodhart famously wrote that a key electoral demographic could be defined in Somewheres and Anywheres. Somewheres are rooted in place and community; Anywheres are footloose and and educationally privileged. To which I would add the global category of migrants, who are Nowheres (see above).

The key here is having nowhere to belong. Former PM Theresa May talked of “citizens of nowhere” in 2016, but she meant globe-trotting tax-exiles and the like. I mean Nowhere people, with nowhere to go – and it’s toxic for all of us that there are so many of them.

This is where the question “does this country belong to me?” carries so much human freight (like a small boat, as it happens).

To belong is an atavistic human need. American psychologist Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs places belonging and love as principal needs in his pyramid between basic physicalities (such as safety) and self-fulfilment at the apex. “Belongingness”, a sense of home, is vital for human stability.

This is where the question “does this country belong to me?” carries so much human freight (like a small boat, as it happens). Simply to repel refugees like they’re someone else’s problem is massively to miss a point, because they’re going to carry on looking for somewhere to belong. So they’re going to keep coming.

Maslow identified religious groups as one of those offering a sense of belonging. I would guess as much as two-thirds of the congregation I’ve looked after over the past decade came to church for that sense of belonging, which we’re called to offer to the despised and marginalised as well as the Somewheres and Anywheres.

Miroslav Volf has written here that “God created the world to live in it” and therefore, I contend, belongs to it. So we’re called to “live in more homelike ways”, which I define as a sense of familiarity and belonging. That’s the theology of it.

We are now facing the politics of it. Nationalism is not enough. We need leaders who can solve this at a global level, which is both a political and a theological imperative.

Perhaps a way of reframing my questions, in this Refugee Week as we ponder how to vote, is: “Do I belong to these politics? And do these politics belong to me?”