In the end, the election results were pretty much as everyone had been predicting. Kinky President, despite a fairly strong ‘outsider’ campaign from Ash, Will Chamberlain Librarian, Poppy Simister Treasurer-elect, and all the candidates elected to standing seem to have an uncanny liking for Kingston over Sangha. Odd co-incidence that.
Now more interesting stuff. Thursday’s debate was one of the best since Michaelmas’s epic No-confidence debate. The motion was about whether religion should have a place in politics, which has the potential to be incredibly dry and indeed Ash and Kinky, the first two speakers, both made it so. This was slightly disappointing, because both of them can be highly impressive speakers – Kinky’s well known for his cutting and often hilarious interjections from the floor, and Ash was an excellent schools debater in his day. But both of them were playing it safe, trying not to make any gaffes before the election, but giving the strong impression that they wanted to get the thing over with so they could get out to whatever major social event was on that night, to pick up a few last-minute votes. No-one wins votes in the chamber on the night before elections, because you can pretty much guarantee that everyone there will have made up their mind already. Still, both of them gave credible, coherent speeches. Kinky argued that letting religious values into politics led to the kind of theocratic politics practised in Iran, Saudi Arabia and even the USA. ‘We’ve thankfully escaped that in Britain,’ he continued, ‘but in voting for the opposition you would be turning back the clock.’ He was rather floored by a point of information from Henry Curr, who made the very sensible point that, given most politicians do have some kind of religious values, voters should probably know about the values a politician may hold when they cast their ballot. Kinky didn’t have much of an answer.
Ash opened with some gracious praise for Kingston, telling us what a pleasure it had been to run against him (really Ash? Really?), and how wonderful it had been to run into him at every social event in the university. This raised a good laugh. He went on to argue that religion was ineluctably intertwined with politics and that it was impossible to separate them. It was a dry schools debatery-type speech, but solid nevertheless – just not that amusing.
Tom McNally, who is something in the Lib Dems, made a good stab at arguing that politics in Britain is far too religious for the country’s good. Religious was a malign force in politics because the distinctive characteristic of the religious position was that it held that ‘the things that I do should also be imposed on other people.’ Fewer than 200 MPs chose to affirm their loyalty to the Queen rather than take the standard (religious) oath when they entered Parliament, he argued, and this suggested that politicians were far more religious than the population at large. No it doesn’t, Tom, it just suggests that most MPs are hypocrites.
Labour minister Steven Timms argued that religion actually plays a strongly positive role in public life, as shown by the great anti-poverty work done by Christian charities around the world. But he was completely upstaged by Freddie O’Morgan, a last minute stand in for a politician who cancelled. O’Morgan is, as far as I can see, some kind of comedian. This sounds slightly incongruous in the context of a high-minded philosophical debate. But O’Morgan was epic. Clad in a dinner jacket, bow tie and Converse shoes, he completely upstaged everyone who had gone before. ‘The danger is, in attempting to do God, our politicians think they are doing good,’ he thundered, wandering around the chamber and occasionally stabbing his finger in the air to emphasise a point. ‘They assume that opposition to their decisions is little different to opposition to God’s work,’ he argued, pointing out that the segregationist states in the southern US thought that they were carrying out God’s will. Henry Curr popped up to offer his twenty third Point of Information of the night. ‘Stay standing and I’ll take you in a minute,’ O’Morgan told him, and the audience fairly exploded with mirth.
There were a couple of decent politicians arguing about whether the general crappiness of Iranian politics was due to religion, the Bishop of Leicester observed that the British Humanist Society has barely more members than the British Sausage Society, and the debate wrapped up with two superb speeches from the closing speakers. Ben Woolgar, a Balliol fresher who captained the winning England team at last year’s World Schools debating championship, argued that ‘justification by faith alone is incredibly damaging. Extremists can’t be argued with, because they always reply “I did it because God told me to.” Faith destroys politicians’ humility.’ This argument relied on the slightly dubious assumption that politicians possess some degree of humility in the first place, but it was well made, and Woolgar is an excellent speaker (as, to my great frustration, he has been since he was outdebating me even before he hit puberty).
Matthew Parris, who is one of the best and most intelligent columnists at the Times, simpered (he has a rather weak and effete voice that fails to match up to that formidable mind) that, although there was plainly no God and religious people were deluding themselves to think otherwise, they had ‘as much right to delusion as a feng shui practitioner, or a Liberal Democrat.’ Indeed, religion was often a wholly positive force in politics. ‘But if God actuated their lives, they should tell us. Tony Blair’s crime was not that he heard voices, but that he didn’t tell us.’ Powerful stuff, and his joke about Tom McNally, sitting opposite, was a classic: ‘Tom McNally toyed with the idea of becoming a Baptist, but changed his mind when he realised that the process of baptism by total immersion would necessitate disappearing from the public eye for fully thirty seconds.’ Laura, bring Parris back next term please. You’ll need all the decent speakers you can get if you’re going to match the really excellent series of debates that Stuart’s put on this term.
