Who could ever have seen this coming? *rolls eyes*
This was always going to be Tim’s biggest problem, which is to be honest is crazy if you look at it from outside the political bubble. Tim’s fundamental Christian beliefs should not be the most posed question that he faces from the media but whoever said life was fair?
Everyone knew he’d face these questions and the fact he didn’t have a good answer for it is a big cross against the work from his inner-circle. The questions were going to come and they were going to come thick and fast and whilst it may be unfair, Tim put himself out there on the Christian ticket with two pieces in The Guardian within the past fortnight talking about it. If you are going to speak about it so openly then expect scrutiny. Don’t bleat about how other religions wouldn’t get scrutiny, that isn’t fair. I’m pretty sure plenty of politicians from around the religious fraternity have faced questions as to how their faith interacts with their politics.
Was his interview with Cathy Newman a car-crash? No. Was it uneasy? Oh yes, yes it was. n a piece entitled, On why I voted the way I did in the Lib Dem leadership election… I openly questioned whether Tim was prepared for the obvious questions that were coming on this subject. It seems as though he wasn’t. I actually took quite a lot of stick for even bringing it up and whether it was fair, my thought process was as a judge would say, ‘well counsel, you’ve opened the door…’ and if the door has been opened, prepare yourself for the onslaught.
The problem with religion is it doesn’t sound good in a sound bite. We are not a deeply religious nation and whilst in the good ol’ U S of A you have to be very public in your Christianity, over here all that will do is make people look at you with slightly narrowed eyes, rightly or wrongly.
So whilst it was a tough question to answer, he had to actually answer it and not in a wishy-washy way that he did. ‘Well all of us are sinners’ is not an acceptable response unless you want the electorate to believe that you think it is a sin. Here’s a good analogy, if someone asks you, ‘does my bum look big in this?’ and you respond, ‘well all bums look big in that dress’ then the person posing the question will infer that you think their bum looks big.
If Tim thinks that it is a sin then so be it. Part of liberty is the freedom of thought and the freedom of expression. Tim is fully entitled to believe that homosexuality is a sin. You and I may not agree with him but heck he’s entitled to that view (if indeed it is his view, which the evidence implies it probably is). The issue is whether his personal view will influence how he acts on such issues in his role as leader of a liberal political party. He has repeatedly stated that it wouldn’t and that should be the end of that in a perfect world. Still, we aren’t in a perfect world are we?
I have been disappointed by people who have said that this is a vendetta against Tim, the Lib Dems, Christianity when in fact it was a legitimate question and one that was always going to be posed. Plenty in the LGBT+ community are fully supportive of Tim whilst other do seem to have been concerned by his comments. I also think it is very fair to say that as a collective, had Nigel Farage for example made these comments then there would’ve been a more united assault on his character because of them. Some people are basing their reaction based on who said what instead of what was said and that I feel is not right.
This is a really small issue in the grand scheme of things for Tim and the Lib Dems but it is one that the media will peck at and peck at until they have a definitive answer. Tim (and his team, but in reality mainly Tim) needs to find a better answer to the question and once he does, the question will stop coming. I told him several weeks ago that he needed better answers to these questions and he chose to ignore me (which is fair enough, I know bugger all) but maybe now having seen the backlash not just within certain section of the party he now leads but also from potential voters, he’ll understand that he isn’t a backbencher any more and he will face a very different level of scrutiny (once more, rightly or wrongly on such an issue) but it comes with the territory.
Tim should be facing questions about how to rebuild the party, grow liberal values, make the party more gender balanced both in terms of councillors and MPs, what policies he wants to bring to the core of the party and the like. Instead the narrative is all about his Christianity, which is not good for neither himself personally nor the party.
So the answer is simple. Find the answer to the fecking question and then we can move on and start talking about the actual important shit.
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