Strong and Stable

Theresa May is talking about strong and stable leadership. A lot. Like some kind of dystopian Tory stuck record she is repeating the phrase regardless of whether it makes any sense in a given context. It runs through the Tory campaign like a motorway through a site of natural beauty. In an admirably ecumenical fashion it is the mantra of the vicar's daughter. It sounds like either the world's worst dating site bio or an advertising slogan for toilet paper. Yet again and again, the Prime Minister says it. If Theresa May were asked whether she would prefer tea or coffee, she would respond that she stands for strong and stable leadership, and that to chose either drink would be to risk handing power to the Coalition of Chaos.

Why is she doing this? The image she wants to present is a classically conservative one - of order and unity, bringing the nation together above the noise of political contest. It is a disturbing outlook for sure: taken to extremes, it feeds into the kind of grotesque fascism represented across the Channel by Marine Le Pen. It cannot be denied, or at least it should not be denied, however that these tropes appeal to no small number of people: leadership, unity, stability, strength.

Not everyone for whom this talk is comforting or uplifting has a pair of jackboots on their shoe-rack. May's values appeal to the anxious, to those whose lives lack shape, community, or apparent meaning. They offer a prospect of having a clear place in the world and of belonging to something along with others. In other words, they promise to undo the unsettling effects of capitalism. Right-wing politics in capitalist society finds itself caught in a constant bind: on the one-hand wishing to unleash the market on society in the cause of profit, on the other needing to restore the order also required by profit in response to the disorganising effects of capital's social rampage.

The Left has to understand the roots and the appeal of language like May's in order to respond to it adequately. It would be a mistake of catastrophic proportions, and a betrayal of the victims of the racism 'national unity' invariably brings in its wake, to adopt May's own themes in the fashion of Blue Labour. Even offering 'leadership' seems to me to suggest a presidential politics to which we'd be better placed to propose an alternative: we are not so much about leading as allowing people to take control of their own lives. This said, in order to counter the 'strong and stable' line, something has to be said that speaks to the uncertainty, vulnerability and isolation that breeds it. Corbyn's programme is good in this respect; in the longer run an explicit class politics is the answer. For now, the task is to get out there and offer an alternative remedy to the disease for which May offers toxic snake oil.

The Empty Chair

I do not like presidential style debates. This is because I do not like presidents. In particular, I do not like presidential politics, descending, as it invariably does into a personality contest, focusing on who is the 'strongest leader' and who performs best in front of the cameras. This type of politics, which was drip fed to Britain during the Blair years, takes politics further away from the grassroots and encourages aesthetics at the expense of policy.

I can't bring myself to condemn Theresa May for failing to take part in a leaders' debate, then. But, more importantly, I think that we on the other side ought to think very carefully before making her absence a theme of our campaigning. We should ask ourselves: why is she doing this?

It is not, alas, because she is frightened of Jeremy Corbyn. She no doubt genuinely believes that his policies are barmy and that she would wipe the floor with him. Such is ideology. No, the reason Theresa May won't participate in the debate is that she wants to appear like the natural prime minister, the default option, the incumbent who is not on the same level as the other candidates. This is the resurfacing of the Tories as the natural party of government. Drawing attention to the phenomenon strikes me as not very helpful to Labour.

Much more generally, this election cannot go well for Labour on the basis of the usual channels - televisual challenges and well-handled debates. We can only win on the ground, at community at workplace level, through the engagement of activists. And we can only win by concentrating on politics not personalities.

Egg-gate

I resist the description of myself as a Christian Socialist. I am, rather, a socialist who happens to be a Christian, or a Christian who happens to be a socialist. My point is that I don't think there is a particular type of socialism for Christians. There is just socialism, towards which one might well be motivated by Christianity. In any case, I am suspicious that the designation 'Christian' has functioned historically to drive a wedge between Christian Socialism and the ungodly forces of Marxism. Whereas I think we need a good deal more Marx in the mix.

Nevertheless sometimes Christian identity does insert itself into political life. In a case of life imitating art (the art in question being The Day Today) Theresa May broke off last week from a busy schedule of cosying up to torturers and tyrants to bemoan the fact that the National Trust and Cadbury's had dared to advertise an egg hunt without using the word 'Easter'.

That was laughable. Other attempts to hint at anti-Christian discrimination, and to respond to it by reasserting Christian identity, are considerably less so. Britain First has mounted Christian patrols and harassed Muslims with the assertion that Britain is a "Christian country". One suspects this concern for Christianity is denominationally partial; my Catholicism is unlikely to pass muster, still less the faith of a black-majority Pentecostal church.

As with Theresa May's egg crusade, the fascists' claimed championing of a 1st century Jewish political prisoner is short on detail. Is the Jesus of John's gospel, who claims that his kingdom is "not of this world", the inspiration for the idea of Christian Britain? In these days before Easter, are we to reflect on the passion narratives and their portayal of religious and political authority brutally murdering a man who has opposed social barriers and staged a religio-political protest in the Temple? These are are not themes designed to fit into the Conservative Party conference.

In the same way as Christmas, Easter is a problem for political power in Britain. It is a symbolic resource which can be presented wrapped up in nostalgia and fellow-feeling. If kept vague and unthreatening, a certain amount of religiosity around it can bolster the current vogue for backward-looking conservatism - weren't things better when we believed? But the content of it as a religious festival is at best dubiously helpful to the political right. As a Catholic Worker once put it to me, "the Resurrection is an act of civil disobedience. When the state kills you, you're supposed to stay dead".

Now you, readers, may well have no time for any of this. But still, the thought behind the celebrations of the next few days is that the meaning of human history is disclosed by a battered body, that in order to gain life one must lose it. In order to rise again, for this creed, one must die. Marx says something similar about the international proletariat.