And another thing…

CRANMER reckons there are many reasons why Christians should vote Conservative. Well, of course he does: he’s a Christian, he’s a Tory, ergo, all Christians should be Tories.

I’ve come across this nonsense before, of course, many times, within the church. Shortly after the 1987 general election, I was visiting a friend who had been a member of the same “house church” as me back in our Ayshire days. She had now settled in Sale, Cheshire, with her husband. A Christian friend came round in the evening (with his guitar, natch; wouldn’t want to avoid any evangelical Christian clichés, now, would we?). “Did you vote for our man?” he asked my friend. “Our man”, it turned out, had been the local SDP/Liberal Alliance candidate a few weeks previously, who was also a member of my friend’s local church. Never mind the policies — so long as the person voting for them in the Commons shares your faith. Apparently.

Cranmer’s argument, naturally, is slightly more sophisticated, and it centres on abortion. If you’re a Christian, you’ll oppose abortion, and since David Cameron has apparently offered a free vote on reducing the upper limit, then Christians should vote for a Conservative government. Now, I don’t deny that this argument has a certain logic: more Tory MPs and candidates than Labour tend to be pro-life, so if that’s the most important issue for you, you’ll be tempted to vote accordingly.

But as I’ve argued before, abortion has always been decided on a free vote, and I assume always will be. My biggest problem with Cranmer’s argument (apart from the fact that he refers to himself in the third person; Tom has never been comfortable with that style of writing, which is why he gave up on Facebook) is that he’s trying to accomplish what others —such as Nadine — have tried to do before: make abortion a party political issue along the same lines as in the US.

This would be very bad for British politics and even worse, in the long term, for the Conservative Party. Yes, there was a time when the Republican Party successfully exploited the prejudices and intolerance of the Christian Right for electoral gain. But they paid the price for their 4G strategy (God, guns, gays and gynecology) at the last election and look as if they’ll ditch their fundamentalist allies in order to gain a foothold in the mid-terms next year.

There’s nothing wrong in promoting your own party to those of your own faith, of course. In 1988 I made an impassioned plea to my own church members that the poll tax should be resisted on the basis that a flat tax, with everyone paying the same amount regardless of income, was incompatible with the Biblical principle of tithing. Most members agreed, but it didn’t mean they voted Labour afterwards; I suspect most of them continued to vote Tory.

Tory-voting Christians all too often try to make this specious argument, that a single party (theirs, of course) most accurately represents “Christian values”. Labour-voting Christians, in my experience, tend not to, or at least, they do it less often. Perhaps that’s because they look across at the American political system and are repulsed by the stranglehold that the Christian Right have over Republican policy and don’t want to see the same thing happen here.

More likely, however, they simply recognise that it’s far too simplistic to claim any one party for God, that individuals should be trusted to make their own choice, and those choices respected.

The problem is that there are some vocal Tories out there who look across the Atlantic and actually like what they see. They see the intolerance and ignorance of the likes of Sarah Palin and think: “Yes, let’s have some of that over here!”

Very worrying indeed.

WITH the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill heading back to the Commons this week, Nadine Dorries MP has been drumming up self-publicity support for her stance on abortion.

Nadine got some publicity last time round by spreading the myth that Labour had an unofficial whip on the abortion vote when it last came up. Now she’s at it again. 

In May she was claiming that “Labour abandoned the free vote principle by whipping their MPs on a three line whip ‘to attend the chamber’. I saw the whipping note, a copy of it was left for us to see.”

Now she’s claiming it was Harriet Harman alone who whipped the vote.

Maybe it’s because Nadine hasn’t been an MP for long, but she clearly doesn’t realise that there is no such thing as a whip that forces MPs to “attend the chamber”. She claimed back in May that Labour whips were encouraging Labour MPs to walk into the pro-choice lobby; funny, then, that I walked into the lobby in favour of 20 weeks and found myself accompanied by Nadine and… four Labour whips.

Women’s abortion rights are important to Harriet, and I would be astonished if she had not attempted to persuade as many colleagues as possible to vote to maintain 24 weeks. And I know that Nadine did the same on the other side of the argument. But when Harriet did it, it was “whipping”; when Nadine did it, it was “lobbying”.

In fact, I was approached by only two people asking me to vote one way or the other. Anne Snelgrove, the Swindon MP and a good friend, tutted and shook her head when I told her I would be voting for a lower limit – gosh, some real arm-twisting from the Sisters there, eh?

And who else whipped lobbied me? Oh, that’s right – Nadine Dorries.

Nadine has been trying for some time now to make abortion a party political issue. She justifies this by claiming that Labour made it a political issue first by whipping Commons votes. Now that I’ve pointed out that this never happened, she should withdraw that accusation. She won’t. 

Nadine Dorries must gaze on her new heroine, Sarah Palin, and wonder why she has found it so difficult to import into the UK the rancid politics of hate that the Alaskan governor and her followers thrive upon. To give her her due, Nadine is trying her best. 

But along with the great majority of her own party, I sincerely hope and pray that she fails, as she deserves to.

UPDATE at 11.36 pm: One other thing… If you can be bothered clicking the above link to Nadine’s 27 May entry, you’ll find this reference…

“I love the picture of Harriet Harman watching my speech from behind the speaker’s chair, hand on hip – with a look that says it all!”

to this picture…

Except, this is a composite picture, made up of two separate events: HH is clearly listening, not to Nadine but to the Deputy Speaker, Sir Alan Haselhurst. How egocentric is Nadine?

I was going to follow my own advice and move beyond the ridiculous partisan arguments invented by Nadine Dorries MP to excuse the defeat of her amendment to reduce the upper legal limit for abortion to 20 weeks. She insists that Labour MPs were on a three-line whip to attend the Chamber during the vote, in the expectation that, once there, they would vote for the status quo. I know she’s only been an MP for three years, but that’s long enough to know that there is no such thing as a whip to attend the Chamber.

Following my posting on this very subject yesterday, I’ve had a laughable comment posted from some Tory activist claiming to be “an anonymous Labour backbencher”. Curiously, he/she uses exactly the same terminology as Nadine in his/her insistence that a whipping operation was used to get MPs into the Chamber.

If Nadine’s supporters are going to stoop to this level of duplicity to win the argument, it makes those of us who are sympathetic to her case weep with despair.

One more thing: in a post she wrote today, Nadine insists that it’s not she who is trying to make abortion a political issue. She then carries a link entitled: “Archbishop Cranmer – Why Christians Should Think Thrice Before Voting Labour”.

Irony, anyone?

Nadine Dorries just won’t let it go, will she? Ever since her move to amend the upper legal limit for abortion from 24 to 20 weeks, she’s been blaming the Labour whips for her failure.

Now she prays in aid of her argument an article in the Daily Mail, which claims that Harriet Harman led a whipping operation. Harriet is a long-standing supporter of the right of women to choose to have an abortion; she feels strongly that the limit should not be lowered, and she and other (mostly, but not all, female) colleagues lobbied for her position. Why on earth wouldn’t they? Is Nadine claiming that she didn’t try to persuade other colleagues to support her amendment? I hope she won’t claim that, because she approached me!

So if Nadine encourages support for her amendment, that’s democracy. But if a Labour MP tries to organise against her, that’s anti-democratic. At least she’s dropped her silly claim that there was any kind of official whipping operation by the government whips.

For the record, having announced in my blog and in the media that I was sympathetic to a reduction in the time limit, I was lobbied by two MPs – Anne Snelgrove, who asked me to support the status quo, and Nadine. There was no arm-twisting, no threats. As it should be.

As someone who did actually support a reduction to 20 weeks (unlike Nadine who, in supporting other amendments in favour of limits as low as 12 weeks exposed her opposition even to her own amendment!), I find Nadine’s attempts to make abortion a party political issue extremely distasteful. At the first ever Labour Party branch meeting I ever attended, in 1985, I spoke against a motion calling on Labour policy as agreed at conference (abortion on demand) to be enforced by the whips in the Commons. This has never happened, it will never happen and it didn’t happen last Tuesday, despite Nadine’s fantasies.

Let it go, Nadine, there’ll be other opportunities. But if you keep banging this partisan drum on an issue as sensitive as abortion, you may get all the PR you’ve ever dreamed of, but you’ll alienate any Labour MPs who might otherwise have considered supporting you.

I feel some real disappointment tonight. The votes on 20 and 22 weeks weren’t even close. I didn’t hear Nadine Dorries‘ speech but I’m told it was extremely powerful and moving. As were other contributions on both sides of the debate.

But that’s it. The House has spoken fairly emphatically and it’s clear there’s no mood for change at any time this parliament.

Hectic day – meetings until eight. Then a box to do. “Poor you,” I hear you cry. Yes, well…

Today’s votes on the Embryology Bill produced some interesting alliances, but it all went through unamended, as far as I know. I voted for the clauses on hybrid embryos and abstained on the so-called “saviour sibling” clauses.

The problem with trying to add amendments on abortion to a Bill like this is that the debate will only be given three hours tomorrow. While I understand campaigners’ frustrations at this, they have to accept some responsibility. The government can hardly hand over a whole day’s debate to clauses that weren’t even in the Bill at the start of this process.

I’ve had a few – mostly positive – reactions to my being outed by the Sunday Times yesterday. From the discussions I’ve had, there’ll be more than seven ministers voting for a reduction in the time limit tomorrow. What was less positive was the faceless, impersonal lobbying I’ve had from an organisation that shall remain nameless. Two copies of the same four-page form letter appeared in my pigeon hole at different times of the day. It warned me against “emotive” arguments in favour of a time limit reduction. I find this kind of argument entirely unhelpful. If you support the status quo, you’re being logical and scientific; if you want to reduce the time limit, well, you’re just being emotional, aren’t you?

Equally – perhaps more – unhelpful was an email from SPUC. This debate would be a lot more bearable if the staunchest advocates on either side spent a bit more time being human and a lot less time congratulating themselves on being right all the time.

Jackie Ashley in today’s Guardian portrays the argument on abortion as being one between progressive liberalism and the forces of religious zealotry. What irks me as much as the dogmatic short-sightedness of the latter is the smug arrogance of the former. In a private conversation three years ago with arch pro-choice MP Dr Evan Harris, he told me: “I expect you would deny IVF treatment to a woman who had terminal cancer?” Well, duh. It was only afterwards that I realised he was being critical!

I’m a Christian, so I suppose I’m vulnerable to the accusation that I’m allowing religious dogma to dictate how I vote tomorrow. That’s not the case. I’m trying to make an objective judgment based on science and, yes, morality. Why is it that if someone feels the number of abortions that take place in this country is too high, he or she is accused of being a mysoginist?

I see I was one of the seven ministers identified by The Sunday Times this morning as preparing to vote to reduce the 24-week upper limit on abortion. I was actually called by them yesterday afternoon while I was trying, with limited success, to calm a distressed two-year-old who had only just woken from a deep sleep as I lifted him in from the car. So the phone conversation was conducted with very loud screams in the background, though I did find myself, for the first time, verbalising a position which has been developing for a few days since my last post on this subject.

I feel that it’s important that the debate on abortion moves completely away from whether a foetus is “viable” at the point where abortion remains legal. In other words, I am uncomfortable with the notion that a 24-year-old foetus can be both “viable” and can also be legally terminated. Surely better to remove this argument altogether by making sure that no “viable” (I hate the term but can’t think of an alternative) foetus could ever be terminated. The argument for abortion – and I remain convinced that women must continue to have access to legal abortion services – has been fossilised in recent years by an obsession over “viability”. But perhaps public acceptance of abortion can be further secured once we remove that nagging doubt that a baby, and not a “foetus”, is being aborted.

It may be I don’t even get back to the Commons on Tuesday for the vote – I’ll be in Crewe that day.

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill was given its second reading in the Commons tonight by a big majority. Although abortion isn’t yet part of the Bill, MPs will table amendments reducing the upper limit at which a woman can get an abortion, from the current 24 weeks to 22 or even 20.

I genuinely don’t know how to vote on this. Years ago when I was still an evangelical Christian*, I was a dyed-in-the-wool pro-lifer. The first – and only – time I took part in a debate at my school’s debating society was to support the case against abortion. At the first Labour Party branch meeting I ever attended, I spoke against a motion which called for Labour MPs to be whipped to support the party’s policy of “abortion-on-demand”. I lost the vote and was not a popular new member.

Since then I’ve changed my mind. The idea of making abortion illegal repels me. I also don’t think a woman should have to get the permission of two GPs in order to be “approved” for a legal procedure. And I accept recent scientific advice that the survival rate of premature babies has not measurably improved since the current legislation was framed.

What worries me is the question: was the 24-weeks limit right when it was introduced? Should it have been 22 or 20 weeks even then?

I don’t know. I’ll think and read about this more between now and the vote. There seems to have developed a consensus among Labour colleagues at least that we shouldn’t tamper with legislation that was hard-won and seems to be working effectively. Colleagues whose views I deeply respect will vote for the status quo. A lobbying operation is underway and in the voting lobby tonight I was targeted by a colleague who, when I told her I hadn’t yet made up my mind, wrote something indecipherable in a box next to my name.

It’s a classic head v heart thing. There’s no doubt that being a parent of young children has affected my view on this. And by that I absolutely don’t mean to suggest that unless you’re a parent you’re not qualified to make your own judgment. It’s just that it is an emotional subject, as are children.

I hate the hard decisions. But as I’ve said before, MPs are there to make tough decisions, not easy ones. And I want to make the right one, not necessarily the one that will make me popular. Of course, whatever I do, I’ll be more unpopular with some.

*I still consider myself a Christian, just not a particularly evangelical one. Chris Bryant has dubbed me a “recovering evangelical”, which I rather like.