Does Keir Starmer’s atheism matter?

Good Friday, 2021, at Jesus House For All Nations church in Brent, north-west London. Face masked, head bowed, hands clasped, Sir Keir Starmer stands alongside Pastor Agu Irukwu. The pastor opens his arms to invoke Almighty God. We hear Starmer in voiceover: ‘From rolling out the vaccine to running the local food bank, Jesus House, like many other churches across the UK, has played a crucial role in meeting the needs of the community.’ A nice video tribute for Easter, this. Good to see churches getting some recognition. A sign, perhaps, of the inclusive national unity a Labour government would foster. 

By Easter Monday, Starmer has apologised, deleted the video and more or less vowed never again to darken the door of Pastor Irukwu, who, it has emerged, is an opponent of same-sex marriage. Whoops. Sorry. Didn’t realise it was that kind of church.

‘It was a mistake,’ Starmer declares, ‘and I accept that.’ Given that Boris Johnson, Theresa May and the then Prince Charles had also been criticised for visiting Jesus House, you wonder how nobody had checked in advance. Given that none of the others had felt the need to apologise, you wonder what a Prime Minister Starmer would mean for religious believers.

Although Starmer would be the first openly atheist PM – belief in God appears to be about the only view he has never held – that is less noteworthy than it sounds. Ramsay MacDonald was probably an atheist in all but name. Clement Attlee gave the characteristically terse verdict: ‘Believe in the ethics of Christianity. Can’t believe in the mumbo-jumbo.’ Liz Truss affirmed only ‘the values of the Christian faith’.

True, most PMs since Margaret Thatcher have had a religious streak, and two – Gordon Brown and May – were the children of clergymen. But in a country where 37 per cent tick the ‘no religion’ box, a non–believing PM is hardly a sensation. There is no religious vote here as there is in the US, no mileage in exaggerating your Christian identity as, for instance, Italian politicians do. Outrage over Gaza may cost Starmer a few seats in heavily Muslim areas, but only a few.

What does make Starmer different is quite how tin-eared he is in religious matters. It’s impossible to imagine him, like Thatcher, reciting the prayer of St Francis on the steps of No. 10 ; or complaining, as Harold Macmillan once did, that the Archbishop of Canterbury never wanted to discuss religion but kept changing the subject to politics. Trying to stir a religious impulse in the mind of Starmer, one imagines, would be like trying to get a golden retriever into atonal jazz. ‘I’ve always been very focused on an outcome,’ he remarked last year. ‘What am I trying to achieve, where’s the goal, how do we get to that goal, rather than having that conversation with myself about what does this all mean?’ Tom Baldwin’s biography has nothing to say on Starmer and religion.

It’s not that he isn’t trying. Starmer has made sincere efforts to reach out to believers. In 2022 he launched a network of ‘Faith Champions’, 16 parliamentarians with a brief to build links between religious groups and Labour – or as he Starmerishly put it: ‘MPs and peers will be message carriers and engage with specific communities.’ Last month he interviewed Sadiq Khan to mark Eid, and told a newspaper that, to keep up the Jewish traditions on his wife’s side of the family, the Starmers occasionally attend synagogue and say some Jewish prayers once a week. (Part of the Friday evening home time which he hopes to set aside when in office.)

So Starmer does ‘do God’, in a way; just not very convincingly. He got 40 seconds into the conversation with Khan before shifting the subject away from Muslim belief on to the logistics of visiting Mecca (‘There is this theme coming up about visas…’). After mentioning his family’s Jewish roots last month, he mysteriously remarked, ‘They’re not Jewish for reasons I won’t bore you with’, and wouldn’t elaborate.

Does Starmer’s insensitivity to religion matter? It just might. Take his policy of introducing VAT on school fees. Eton and Harrow can take it. But what about the Christian, Muslim and Jewish institutions with attendances below 300 and fees of, say, £6,000 a year, which run on goodwill and prayer?

Again, the proposed ban on ‘conversion therapy’ was abandoned by the Tories partly because every way of framing it was an obvious threat to religious freedom: as the Evangelical Alliance observed, an expansive ban ‘would place church leaders at risk of prosecution when they preach on biblical texts relating to marriage and sexuality’ and could ‘criminalise a member of a church who prays with another member when they ask for prayer to resist temptation’. Labour’s manifesto promises to institute a ban, without explaining how they would avoid putting traditional religious believers on the wrong side of the law.

Progressive politicians long to harness the public spirit and ethical seriousness of religious communities. As Starmer told religious charities earlier this year: ‘We will welcome anyone who wants to make our national life better to take their place at the table, to shape the future.’ But those communities’ deepest commitments often make them difficult to co-opt. Ask Pastor Irukwu. Ask Janet Daby, briefly Starmer’s shadow minister for faith, women and equalities, who had to resign after she publicly mused about protecting the conscience rights of Christian marriage registrars. 

Winston Churchill joked that, although he was not a pillar of the church, he liked to think of himself as a ‘flying buttress’ – i.e., supporting the church from outside. Starmer could never deliver that line: not just because it is too witty and knowledgeable, but because it implies a certain respectful distance from the church, a willingness to let religious communities get on with it. Starmer, on the other hand, gives the impression that he views faith as a resource to be exploited. But when he comes to religious groups with flattering words and promises of a ‘partnership’, the wisest answer may be: please, just leave us alone.