Opinion: “Culture and politics are not disconnected”

Digital Editor’s note: I’m pleased to welcome Tim Farron as our Sorted Magazine Guest Writer. Tim has been the Member of Parliament for Westmorland and Lonsdale since 2005 and served as the Leader of the Liberal Democrat Party from 2015 to 2017. Tim is also the host of Premier’s ‘A Mucky Business’ podcast, which unpacks the murky world of politics and encourages believers around the UK to engage prayerfully.

Tim writes: Central London has felt an increasingly feverish place to be over the last year, and this weekend was no different. Thousands gathered in the city for three different organised groups.

The Unite the Kingdom demonstration marched in support of extreme right activist Tommy Robinson, with signs mourning the death in prison of a man who had been arrested in the Rotherham riots over the summer.

Another group organised by Stand Up to Racism marched in counter-protest to this demonstration.

And yet another group, the United Families and Friends campaign gathered in Trafalgar Square in memory of those who have died in police custody, and was attended by the family of Chris Kaba. This was after the Police Officer who shot Chris Kaba in 2022 was cleared of his murder last week. Three different groups of thousands of people, choosing to protest, all fuelled by raw emotion.

The right to protest is important, and we should consider ourself blessed to live in a country where such demonstrations – whatever we think of them – are freely permitted.

After the heat and noise of the weekend, Parliament looks this week to the budget on Wednesday. This budget is an especially long awaited event. Most new governments introduce their budget just a few days and weeks after they have been elected to power, but the new Labour government has chosen to take its time until now. Soon we will know what the government’s financial plan for the country will look like.

The passion and protest of the weekend seems a world away from the dry and complex array of numbers we will be subjected to on budget day.

Of course, Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves does not have a lever to control peoples levels of satisfaction in their work, or community cohesion, or collective passion about aspects of culture. The levers available to her are taxation, public borrowing, spending on the NHS and other services and the like.

But the day-to-day decisions of government and the scrutiny of their decisions are intimately linked to the culture outside the walls of Parliament.

It is good for politicians to receive the sobering reminder occasionally that there is only so much that they can really control. Especially for a politician in government. There has been much talk in the lead up to the budget by the government of a £22bn black hole in the public finances. It is a statistic usefully employed to prepare the ground for a ‘painful’ budget of difficult decisions. It is a reminder that while it seems nearly all public services are desperate for more support – from the probate office to the prison service – that there is also precious little spare money to go around.

This all paints a bleak picture of an uncertain few years ahead. Financial uncertainty and instability creates cultural uncertainty and instability. People become afraid for their personal circumstances and for those of their families – they may then blame others for their predicament, sometimes it will be politicians who have the finger pointed at them but often it can be other groups in society who cannot reasonably be held responsible, but nevertheless find themselves the focus of people’s anger and frustration. Social and ethnic groups so often fit this bill and become scapegoats. We need to watch out for this and defend those people when this happens.

Sometimes, the best a government can do in such uncertain times is to demonstrate basic competence! A government that is responsible with what it has, is realistic about its limits, and seeks to do right by the poorest and most vulnerable in society with the resources it has is a gift of what theologians call ‘common grace’. A free gift from God that no one deserves but from which we all benefit.

The decisions made on tax and spending may or may not generate the same heat and noise as a culture war protests, but they have a far greater impact on the culture in the long run. A reckless budget, like the now infamous budget announced by Kwasi Kwarteng in Liz Truss’ short lived time in Number Ten, can cause financial shockwaves, trigger inflation and worsen the cost of living crisis. With that came an inevitable rise in cultural instability and anger.

There will be countless impossible to predict consequences from whatever decisions Rachel Reeves announces this Wednesday. The impact on small businesses, incomes, pensions savings, the price of a bus fare, or a pasty, or a pint of beer, or a litre of fuel… there are so many potential consequences that its best to wait and see and weigh things up in the days after the budget itself, no matter how tempting it may be to politicians to make assumptions now!

So we should for Rachel Reeves to carry these responsibilities well and she would act justly especially towards those who have the least and with sober and wise judgement.

Culture and politics are not disconnected. Politics shapes culture just as culture shapes politics. As my friend Andy Flannagan has pointed out, it took changing the law to enforce wearing seat belts in cars for the culture to catch up. As always, let’s remember Jesus’ parable that the wise man builds his house upon the rock of his teaching. Jesus guarantees that storms will rage and waves will rise, but that those houses built on the rock will not fall down. So lets pray for careful stewardship of the public finances and that this might also create some calm and stability in a culture that feels to be rising to a boil.

Tim Farron (pictured above) is the author of A Mucky Business: Why Christians should get involved in politics.

Photo Credits: Getty images