The website of Nick Timothy shows him wearing the claret-and-blue scarf associated with the Aston Villa football club in Birmingham. We can assume, then, that the UK Conservative party MP knows something about this English city’s political divisions and the strong religious undertow to them.
Something Mr Timothy said last week with reference to not only Birmingham but also to the UK’s future struck me as an admission that religious divides are now shaping politics in the country.
Across the board, there is still a reluctance to abandon the concept of the state as a neutral arbiter between its many parts. But raw politics is changing how some are thinking about those internal relations, and something different is driving how politicians see policies as acceptable on the one hand or untouchable on the other.
For those of us who are familiar with sectarian politics, it is clear that the tipping point is coming closer and that its inevitability is becoming more certain.
In a speech to the Policy Exchange think tank – which on the same day launched a highly critical report of a panel charged with agreeing on an official definition for Islamophobia – Mr Timothy called for everyone to envision a state that polices the boundaries between the country’s various ethnic and religious groups.
The purpose, he said, is to foster a new, more interventionist form of social re-ordering, which he called “ordered pluralism”, and allows individuals to live their lives as they choose but requires a shared identity. In the case of the UK, he pointed out, this would involve a recognition of the country’s history, traditions and laws with roots in “Christian thought”.
Mr Timothy conceded that this could lead to a more intrusive and dictatorial state. Further, this type of politics is bound to be unfair regarding how certain groups are treated.
If there is a Petri dish needed in England for politics that deals in community tensions, you could do no better than Birmingham. As far back as the 1960s, the unsparing Conservative cabinet minister Enoch Powell looked at the influx of mainly Caribbean migrants to the city and saw a “foaming river of blood” coursing through UK politics.
Robert Jenrick, one of Mr Timothy’s colleagues, hit the headlines last month when a speech was leaked in which he called one Birmingham district a slum because it was one of the worst-integrated places in the country. “I did not see a white face,” he said.
With the decision of a municipal committee to ban the Israeli football club Maccabi Tel Aviv from travelling to the city to play a game against Aston Villa – something championed by an Independent Muslim MP for the constituency – the city’s divisions were put on a whole new plain. Troublingly, what has started in Birmingham has not stayed in Birmingham but taken on the flavour of a national political driver.
The governing Labour party insists it will have nothing to do with sectarian politics. It has described Nigel Farage’s hard-right Reform UK party as a force bent on sowing divisions across the isles. It has also sought to gain political mileage from the Conservative party’s drift away from the mainstream, particularly with leaders like Mr Jenrick and Mr Timothy specialising in hardline community politics.
Yet, siren politics are setting the tone on hot-button issues like migration and welfare. And if the Labour party declines as a political force – much like the Conservatives appear to have today – then it is likely that the beneficiaries of such a trend will be those who seek to dive into picking good and bad community behaviour.
The rise of sectarian politics in the UK should be viewed against the backdrop of a government that is spending too much and raising too little from its overburdened tax system. There are currently no good solutions to tackle the country’s economic problems, which becomes a recipe for deepening community divisions that eventually infect the country’s main political arena. Opportunistic politicians are bound to use this opportunity to burnish their own brands.
Fundamentally, a country where the state arbitrates by imposing itself over certain religious identities becomes a nasty place very quickly. In the UK, unfortunately, a foundry for this type of politics is already up and running.
