God is back in British politics. That changes everything

In October 1843, moved by distressing parliamentary reports on the iniquities of child labour, Charles Dickens started a feverish bout of writing that concluded just six weeks later in A Christmas Carol. Published on December 19, it rapidly became a bestseller. And at the heart of the tale was Newman’s Court, in the City of London, the likely setting for Scrooge’s counting house.

This December, almost exactly 182 years on, just opposite Newman’s Court at St Michael’s Church, a group of MPs began to fuse their own political cause with the oldest Christmas story of them all.

There the Reform Christian Fellowship, a new special interest group of Nigel Farage’s party, was launched with a traditional service of nine lessons and carols. It was Once in Royal David’s City to start; Hark the Herald to finish. As voices rose to the rafters, it sounded like countless other services being held up and down the country this month.

The difference came in the message – not always of goodwill – coming from both congregation and the pulpit.

“I wonder how long before we’re only allowed a decaffeinated, coffee-flavoured oat milk version of the Nativity,” pondered Reverend Henry Eatock-Taylor. “Picture the scene,” he asked the congregation. “The education department has proposed a culturally sensitive rewrite. Avoid too many male speaking roles. Consider turning the stable into a sustainable eco-dome. If including wise people from the East, watch out for cultural appropriation.”

Sarah Pochin, Reform MP for Runcorn and Helsby, read the second lesson from Matthew chapter one.

Pochin noted that “Reform will always stand up for Christianity in this country, we are fundamentally a Christian country and we are proud to be Christian”. Former Conservative MP Ann Widdecombe declared that the service was the “day when Reform and Christianity are merged”. When Widdecombe rose to give her reading from John, you could barely see her head over the top of the lectern.

“We started the Reform UK Christian fellowship to persuade people to vote Reform,” explained 24 year-old Lachlan Rurlander, who organised the service. A sentiment which, for an insurgent party aiming for power at the next election, marks a dramatic statement of intent. After all, it is only a little over 20 years ago that Tony Blair’s spin doctor Alastair Campbell famously shut down discussion of his boss’s faith with the infamous quip: “We don’t do God.”

Today, in British politics, God is back. And that changes everything.

Christmas may be the obvious moment for Reform to launch its Christian fellowship, but its embrace of faith has deeper roots. The party’s leading Christian advocates, Danny Kruger MP and Tim Montgomerie, have long-held Christian convictions.

Montgomerie co-founded the Conservative Christian Fellowship in the 1990s, which briefly thrived when Iain Duncan Smith led the party. He was also influential in the creation of the successful, Christian-oriented charity, the Centre for Social Justice, which has produced excellent work on welfare.

But it was Kruger, a former Tory MP and a longstanding advocate for poorer communities, who made the explicit link between faith and politics when he rose to his feet on a summer’s afternoon this year in a near empty Parliament chamber. Despite the absence of almost all his fellow MPs, his words proved electrifying when circulated on social media and beyond. “Our democracy is founded on Christian faith,” he said. “The Jewish and Christian God is a God of nations… England was founded and created consciously on the basis of the Bible and the story of the Hebrew people… Ugly and aggressive new threats are now arising, because we have found that in the absence of the Christian God, we do not have pluralism and tolerance.

“All politics is religious,” he noted, dismissing the queasiness about faith that has long persisted in British politics. “And in abandoning one religion we simply create a space for others to move into.” He then called for a Christian revival in Britain and for Christianity to return to what he termed the “public square”.

For many years, advocating such a return might have seemed unwise for a politician seeking high office. Today, however, there is political opportunity in advocating Christian revival in this country.

Why?

Well, one clear reason is that Left-wing activists have all but chased Christianity out of their movement.

While there are a small number of politicians on the Left who self-define as Christians, the suggestion that Christianity is incompatible with diversity and women’s rights has forced many progressive politicians to keep their mouths firmly shut on religious matters.

Think about how Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron was hounded by Left-wingers (including in his own party) for his religious belief, or how the SNP leadership candidate Kate Forbes faced ferocious criticism and scrutiny of her own deeply-held faith. And it wasn’t so long ago that Labour’s Ruth Kelly, a devout Catholic, faced hostile questions about whether she could credibly lead a health service which obviously routinely offered abortion services.

Then there is the American example. Inevitably, as Christianity has become key to differentiating conservative movements from the progressive Left, it is the Trump White House and Make America Great Again movement that has shown how far it can be taken.

True, American politicians have always been more comfortable talking about religion than their British counterparts. There, Catholic politicians, for example, openly wear ashes on their foreheads on Ash Wednesday. Where British politicians worry that talking about religion will alienate voters, Americans have no trouble professing “In God we trust”. Since the 1990s, Christian political activists have been an integral part of the Republican Party machine. They played a particularly high-profile role in George W Bush’s movement.

But political Christianity has taken on ever greater significance recently, notably since Trump’s second coming. In November, for example, the American president declared that if Nigeria didn’t prevent the killing of Christians there, he might send in US troops “guns-a-blazing” to protect them. Trump’s secretary of war, Pete Hegseth, uses his own body to declare the total fusion of politics, arms and faith, criss-crossing his torso with tattoos that leave little doubt that, in his view, the fate and foreign policy of the American nation is intimately bound up with the Christian faith.

His chest features a large depiction of the Jerusalem cross – a square cross with a smaller square cross in each of the four quadrants, also known as the Crusader’s cross. Hegseth also has the words “Deus Vult” on his arm (Latin for “God wills it”). Another cross is accompanied by a sword, apparently referring to the Biblical verse (Matthew 10:34): “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.”

He is also tattooed with an American flag flanked by an AR-15 rifle.

Then there is also the role of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, assassinated in Utah in September. Kirk was praised after his death as a true friend by US vice-president JD Vance. But Vance also made explicit that Kirk’s faith was part of a political struggle echoing the traditional religious struggle of good and evil. Kirk, he said, had paid with his life for standing up to “this incredibly destructive movement of Left-wing extremism that has grown up over the last few years”.

“People on the Left are much likelier to defend and celebrate political violence,” he added. “This is not a ‘both sides’ problem… I believe [this] is part of the reason why Charlie was killed by an assassin’s bullet.”

The Manichean message found adherents here in Britain as well as in America. Nigel Farage talked positively about Kirk after his murder, and at Tommy Robinson’s Unite the Kingdom march in September, some activists displayed posters with Kirk’s face on it.

One answer then, to why political Christianity may finally be taking off in Britain is, in short, British Right-wing political activists appear to have been inspired by the way the American Right has entwined Christianity into a coherent cultural force at a time when culture wars are becoming an ever more powerful tide in the affairs of this state.

Robinson, real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, has been quick to spot the opportunity. This month, while Reform was gathering its Christians in St Michael’s, Robinson was convening a Christian event to “put Christ back into Christmas” on Whitehall opposite Downing Street.

Robinson does not hide that he is a recent convert to the Christian cause, telling the crowd he used to “hate the church” before seeing the light while talking to a pastor in prison who taught him about the Bible.

Indeed, when Robinson was released from prison in May he walked out wearing what looked like rosary beads and he has begun to talk widely about his religious awakening, not least on a video of a trip of his to see Christian sites in the Middle East.

And if you watch any YouTube videos by Tommy Robinson associate Danny Tommo (Daniel Thomas), he regularly invokes Jesus in his messages. You can therefore find yourself jumping from a video of him on a beach in Calais disabling the motor of a dinghy set to bring illegal migrants to England, to another hearing him talk about why Jesus is at the heart of everything they do.

Naturally this invocation of Christianity from Robinson and his associates has provoked a reaction from another institution which feels it has a key stake in the message of Christ: the Church.

After Robinson’s Unite the Kingdom rally in September, a group of clergy wrote to The Times lamenting the use of Christian iconography. A few weeks ago, a campaign led by the Church of England bishop of Kirkstall in Yorkshire launched a poster campaign to challenge what he said was “the capture of Christian language and symbols by populist forces seeking to exploit the faith for their own political ends”.

This is where the revival of Christianity in British politics becomes particularly fraught. Putting aside the ambiguities in their language, it’s clear that at least some critics of Robinson and like-minded activists are suggesting the Christian faith is being deployed as a political weapon to mobilise against Islam in Britain. They’re further effectively saying Christianity is being used to give moral authority to a movement which doesn’t have any such authority.

And there’s no denying that large-scale immigration – particularly from majority-Muslim countries – is a significant part of the reason why political Christianity is emerging as a force in Britain. If Robinson is explicit that Britain is a Christian country which must defend its faith in the face of the very large increase of Muslims in Britain, Kruger noted in his summer speech that he couldn’t be “indifferent to the extent of the growth of Islam in recent decades”.

He didn’t say this with any hostility and left it at that. But it’s reasonable to assume that some political activists are discovering Christianity in the way critics suggest: opportunistically, to bash political Islam. It’s also reasonable to assume that some politicians are focusing on faith simply because of demographic change and the rise of other religions more generally. It’s making some ask themselves, possibly for the first time, whether Britain is a Christian country and, if so, what should be done about it?

If politicians are doing so, the data suggests that so are voters. And that theoretically represents a new constituency to target, a Christian political force with the potential to mould.

How powerful could this bloc be on the Right? There are two things to consider: firstly, how many voters in general are interested in the Christian message; secondly, whether practising Christians are open to the Right’s message.

At first blush, it appears those advocating a Christian political message might be on to something. Polling in the autumn by research agency Public First for The Telegraph revealed 64 per cent agreed Britain was becoming a less Christian country. Nationally, of those who said they thought Christianity was in decline, 60 per cent said this was a bad thing, with just 10 per cent saying it was a good thing.

Interestingly, the poll also revealed significant differences in opinion on Christianity depending on political ideology. For example, 82 per cent of those planning to vote Reform at the next election said they thought Britain was becoming less Christian, and 68 per cent of those planning to vote Tory agreed. The overwhelming majority thought it a bad thing. On the other hand, Labour voters were far less concerned, with less than half saying Britain was becoming less Christian or thinking it a bad thing.

When asked why Britain is becoming a less Christian country, 83 per cent of Reform supporters named immigration as the main reason; 69 per cent of Conservatives agreed, while only 45 per cent of Labour supporters said the same. And while 69 per cent of Tories identified most with Christianity, on the Left only 57 per cent of Labour voters did so, and just 25 per cent of Greens.

Clearly then, Christianity, and Christian politics, could be a highly fruitful area for Right-leaning parties.

More so as we appear to be in the midst of something of a Christian revival, marked by a groundswell in popular religious interest apparently independent of political influence. If you talk to regular churchgoers, particularly Anglicans, they suggest that “something seems to be happening” and that more people, especially young people, are starting to take an interest in Christianity.

The Church of England recently reported that the number of people “in the pews on a typical Sunday” was 582,000 in 2024, up by 1.5 per cent. And the Catholic Church in England and Wales recently reported 575,453 attended mass weekly in 2024 (with an additional 26,561 receiving communion at home, usually because of ill health), compared to 552,631 in 2023. Both denominations have reported increased attendance for the last few years (although both are likely to have congregations well below their pre-Covid levels).

More anecdotally, people are reporting how young people are flocking to special services targeted at them. At St Helen’s in Bishopsgate in the City, for example, services are rammed with interested young adults who aren’t political but are driven by a straightforward belief in Christianity. This is just one example.

It is hard to imagine that even vaguely significant numbers of these churchgoers will turn out for Tommy Robinson. But research suggests the mainstream political Right will indeed benefit.

Research by the think tank Theos suggests that Anglicans have traditionally voted Conservative in large numbers, with 61 per cent of Anglicans voting Tory in 2017. Interestingly, in mid 2019, the Brexit Party was picking up nearly a third of the Anglican vote, according to polling.

Theos further points out that Catholics, who were reliable Labour supporters for many years, have now become what they term “floating voters”, as many on the Left have turned on the Catholic Church which they associate with unacceptable social policies.

This is part of a trend. While the leadership of the Church of England still feels quite “Leftie”, their congregations have noticed that the Left’s positions on everything from abortion to family values are hostile to their own.

In all, this suggests a major Christian movement developing on the Right.

But there is a complicating factor: the fact that many modern Christians – notably those that have driven up recent attendance – are themselves from recent migrant backgrounds. According to research published earlier this year, among 18 to 54-year-olds, one in three churchgoers were from an ethnic minority background, compared to one in five in 2018. Meanwhile, if you go to any Catholic church in the big cities of England, the congregation is entirely multiracial.

While they tend to hold “small-c” conservative beliefs, they are currently suspicious at best towards Reform, and very nervous about what the rising profile of Robinson means for their own lives. While self-declared Christians are clearly leaning Right, there is a looming ideological and theological tension emerging.

No wonder then, that Reform would say they want people from all backgrounds to join their Christian movement. Tommy Robinson, too, would say the same; his Christmas event was a multiracial affair. In time it seems clear that vast numbers of “small-c” conservative migrants will indeed vote for Right-wing parties, just as Hispanic voters have recently defected in large numbers from the Democratic Party to the Republican cause.

We’re certainly not there yet. But back at the Reform carol concert, there is tentative optimism that the party can pull off at least some version of a conservative, faith-driven political movement. And this is a reasonable expectation.

Christianity, explains Rurlander, can be woven into a whole political manifesto.

Reform stands for “things like free speech, working hard, strong borders, strong national identity,” he says. “Any one of those examples is from the Bible. For example, free speech – the Gospel is meant to go out freely and peaceably, it’s not meant to go out with force. And that means that we need a political environment where freedom of speech is valued.”

This is where the polling numbers suggest success may lie for political Christianity in this country – not in using Christianity as code for an “Old England” which looks like “pre-immigration England”, but instead as the heart of a values-led movement which is united around small-c conservatism.

This is indeed a political opportunity, and it seems Reform knows it.

“We support Reform UK because it stands for fair taxation and sovereignty over [our] borders,” Dan Barker, a Reform UK board member, says as the carols fade away. “These are Christian ideals, and we hope to persuade Christians that they can vote for Reform in good conscience.”

[Source: Daily Telegraph]