‘Laws against religious discrimination do not protect Christians’

Former Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron stood down after controversy over his views on gay matters (Image: PA)Of course, the Lib Dems have form. Their own leader, Tim Farron, stood down after a controversy over his views on gay matters, stating that he felt torn between living as ‘a faithful Christian’ and being the leader of a political party.As long ago as 1992, Paddy Ashdown announced that abortion would no longer be a matter of conscience but actually party policy, causing the Catholic MP David Alton to announce he would not stand again. When he went to the Lords, he was on John Major’s list not Ashdown’s.This is straightforward religious discrimination but it is rife. Diversity apparently works for Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus, Jews and all manner of odd cults but not for Christians, who face the secular equivalent of the Inquisition, particularly in quarters describing themselves as liberal.When Pope Benedict XVI upset Muslims with some unguarded remarks in an academic lecture, worshippers at Westminster Cathedral that evening were greeted with placards proclaiming ‘Jesus is the slave of Allah’ and ‘Islam will conquer Rome’.The police did nothing, which I applaud in the name of free speech, but would they also have done nothing if Christians had stood outside a mosque proclaiming ‘Allah is the slave of Jesus’ and ‘Rome will conquer Islam’? Like heck they would.The laws of racial equality do not protect white people, the laws on gender equality do not protect men and the laws against religious discrimination do not protect Christians. Islam has stricter teaching on gay issues than Rome and both Muslims and Hindus are opposed to abortion but you will never hear their politicians pressed on such issues unless they belong to foreign governments.David Campanale is just the latest in a long line of victims.Yet another documentary contains the erroneous claim that John Major was guilty of hypocrisy because he ran a campaign for ‘Back to Basics’ while having an affair with Edwina Currie.Major as I think the entire press corps knows but ignores because it is an inconvenient truth, was not running a morality crusade but wanting education to focus on the three Rs, policing to be focused on crime and the NHS on patients rather than being bogged down in bureaucracy and peripheral considerations.At the following general election, William Hague ran an almost identical campaign but under the title of ‘The Common Sense Revolution’.It included adverts proclaiming that under the Conservatives, teachers would teach, nurses would nurse etc. But fiction sells better than fact.If the nurses strike they betray their very calling, endangering lives and causing suffering.On Sunday evening I watched a news bulletin in which a nurse and father of a small girl said he wanted to give her experiences which she would remember and cherish but that he could not afford to do so on his salary, so he would strike.Really? His child’s pleasure is worth more than another’s life or wellbeing? There will be people worrying about putting sufficient food on the table for their children, about keeping the roofs over their heads as mortgages rise, about turning up the heating.Cherished experiences will be low on their list of priorities but accessing NHS care will be mighty high. They don’t need to find the nurses aren’t there. Sir Gavin Williamson may be a knight but he ain’t no gentleman To use the sort of gutter language he employed towards a woman reached the depths of coarseness and vulgarity. That, however, doesn’t make Williamson a bully: just an overgrown, petulant, self-entitled schoolboy.Bullying can only be inflicted by the stronger on the weaker and few people are as powerful as a chief whip. Bullying is the sustained ill-treatment of someone who cannot fight back, not a sudden burst of anger between equals, but now the wokerati cry bullying at the first sound of a slightly raised voice or irritation in a text.Predictably the Opposition is calling for Williamson’s resignation. Rishi Sunak should tell such baying MPs to get lost. If he gives them Williamson’s head they will only go after another one, as will the media.It is time for grown-up politics to be restored.Would somebody please add up all the carbon emissions from jets and cars over the 27 Climate Change Conferences and then publish the figures?Then would somebody add up what we, Britain, have spent on climate change measures in the last 10 years and compare it to the hole in Britain’s finances?And when the abacus has done its work, can we then reflect on a thing called proportionality as we compare the UK’s one per cent contribution to carbon emissions and China’s 25 per cent?