Reflections of a stormy petrel

It has to be admitted. Just think of the most recent instance: Tony Blair, after a two-year campaign, was supposed to have the European presidency virtually sewn up. Gordon Brown took his side publicly - and suddenly the Blair candidature is in trouble. Brown really does have the Midas touch in reverse - everything he touches turns to ....

It is not often that you will find me on the same side as the Reverend Ian Paisley (who once screamed "Antichrist!" at the Pope across the European Parliament) or as atheist brutes such as Richard Dawkins and Polly Toynbee; in fact, I do not recall it ever happening before. But every one of us, and many other shades of opinion besides, have been horrified for months at the worst yet of the many insane ideas to come out of the Tory Blur and his gang of reality-challenged free-market ideologues and PC addicts. This was his Religious Hatred Bill, a proposal to make attacks against any religion illegal.

All sides of the community, with the exception of most Muslims, regard this frightful piece of tyranny with horror. Artists and intellectuals joined with Evangelical Christians, atheists, Buddhists, in demonstrating against it before Westminster Palace. It would have criminalized anything that any particular religious group could reasonably describe as offensive to its principles - a long-held desire of Muslims, and perhaps of pseudoreligious scoundrels such as Scientologists, but of nobody else.

Bear in mind that we are talking about much more than the ancient offence of blasphemy. Blasphemy meant violently insulting God. Being "offensive" means a whole lot more. Even if you do not take into account the commonplace fact that there is nothing that cannot be offensive to someone or other (and I have certainly defriended one person and banned another, for making what I regarded as offensive remarks about my personal integrity, where they could not even see that they had been offensive), consider the following scenarii: 1) a man going up to a Muslim and denying that Muhammad was ever a prophet; 2) a man going up to a Buddhist and saying that what the Buddha taught was so much nonsense; 3) a man going up to a Christian and saying that the Christian religion was the product of collective delusion among the disappointed follower of a Jewish rebel executed by the Romans (and who, of course, never rose from the dead). Does anyone doubt that all these statements can certainly be, and be meant to be, offensive? But they can also be, and should always be taken as, reasonable challenges to the basis of the religion.

And religion ought to be discussed. There is the simple point that two contradictory views of reality cannot both be true. Therefore, even admitting that one religion is correct in its description of reality (by "religion", here, I mean any philosophy of existence, including therefore such a thing as modern atheism, a.k.a. "monistic materialism" or "humanism"), all others must be incorrect in some of their features. Therefore debate is necessary, not only to show (granted that it is possible to show it) the flaws in any religion, but, more importantly still, to refute in principle and practice the monstrosity of a notion of two equally right and equally valid, yet contradictory, descriptions of reality.

The Tory Blur's obscene bill was not only a liberticidal assault on freedom of thought, but an irrational display of misology - hatred of reason - which Socrates warned long ago was one and the same as misanthropy - hatred of human beings. It was widely regarded as a desperate attempt to fish for a few muddy Muslim votes (lost to Labour by innumerable Politically Correct decisions as well as by the war in Iraq) by putting the Muslim religion - which, alone of all the main religions practised in Great Britain, demands to be beyond discussion - in a position to take all opponents to court. And that being the case, I cannot describe my joy and relief when this crime against humanity was decisively rejected by both Chambers of Parliament.

Those of us who have long since seen through the Tory Blur's hollow front have come to regard with dread the moment when a new "initiative" or bill or program is announced; because the history of the last two Parliaments is so servile, so uncritical, so meanly disciplined and obedient, that for the last nine years the announcement of a new government policy was one and the same with its adoption - delayed, at most, by a few ineffectual amendments put in by the Lords and promptly removed by the Commons. But this time, at last, at last, the Commons forgot that they were were the servants of Mr.Tony and had to do his bidding; and they remembered only that they were citizens, free men, and adults, with the duties of adults. At least, enough of them remembered it, to deliver a decisive defeat to the Government, passing all the Lords' amendments; with the added and delicious insult that one crucial vote was lost by one vote because the Right Honourable Anthony Blair MP was not in the House at the time!

I had not dared to hope for this result; and even now, the battle is by no means over. The Tory Blur is obstinate as well as deluded, and I think he will try to railroad his Murder of Thought Bill through Parliament by some means or other. But, for once, and God be thanked (or whatever it is that you pray to), freedom and justice have prevailed in the Mother of Parliaments. When I heard about the vote missed by one voter, I laughed; but when I was clear that the most outrageous proposals of the Bill had been soundly defeated, I burst into song - the old Protestant hymn, Now thank we all our God; both stanzas. A great evil has been averted for now, and, God willing, it will remain averted.

It has taken ten years for me to understand the so-and-so; and (as was to be expected) it was religion that gave me the clue. Tony Blair has just promoted one Ruth Kelly, a universally respected junior minister, who just happens, however, to be a devout Catholic, a member of Opus Dei, and to have managed her last few years' work at the Treasury (which is reputed to be brilliant) during a nearly continuous pregnancy - she had four children in six years. Clearly not a person who regards contraception or abortion highly.

This drew my attention to Blair's religious attitude. Blair's wife and children are Catholic and reputedly devout. He goes to church with them and has actually been present at a private ceremony with the Pope (although I cannot believe the rumour that the Pope let him take Communion as well - that would be in violation of umpteen-squinchy Church laws about schism). At the same time, he is a strong supporter of abortion and half-a-dozen other causes that do not resonate well with Catholic doctrine or spirituality. Yet he goes on the same way. For seven years or more he has done this constant double act, appearing in Catholic churches every sunday, the picture of devotion, fuelling rumours that he is about to convert, but sticking to a policy that pleases neither the moralist conservative wing of the Church (who notice with distaste his continued support for abortion and such things) nor the socially-minded "liberal" area, which regards his privatizing and big-business-friendly policies with disgust. (Some of us orthodox, such as yours truly, are not too enamoured with them either.)

Shall I tell you what Tony Blair is? He is a flirt. He is the male version of what the English call a prickteaser. The difference between a flirt and a tart is that the flirt has no intention of actually doing anything. He or she is always dropping hints, always leading people on, because leading people on is what s/he does. If you want an example of a flirt at work, just follow the agonizing saga of the succession continuously promised and continuously denied to Gordon Brown (no wonder the Chancellor of the Exchequer is supposed to be brooding and jealous; that is exactly the attitude of the victim of a flirt). His flirting is not, in the main, sexual (although his popularity among women has always baffled me), but it certainly is in every other way the exact picture of the worst, most agonizing, most heartless leader-on of lovers.