By What Authority Are You Doing These Things?

The Age of Neoliberalism

The 1960s are an important decade for understanding socio-political change in the UK, including the role of its state religion—Christianity, or rather the Church of England—in relation to religious identification (Brown 2003; Brown 2006: 224–77; Brown 2009: 175–233; Parsons; McLeod). Intensified ideas of individualism and consumerism that would take hold in the UK emerged from the changes of the 1960s and are related to a decline in church attendance (e.g., more choices on Sundays) and a decreasing influence of the Church of England in English political and civic discourses. The result has not, of course, been widespread atheism. The language of the Bible and Christianity continues to permeate English politics and culture, and there has been a more privatised understanding of religion rather than close identification with churches. Or, as Grace Davie famously put it, “believing without belonging.” All these changes are integral to understanding how the Bible has been understood in political discourse.

And such changes in turn cannot be disassociated from neoliberalism, which since the late 1960s began to replace the previous Fordist-Keynesian consensus in political and cultural discourses. To generalize, neoliberalism covers a variety of issues such as an emphasis on individual property rights and free trade, the private sector over the public sector, deregulation of the market, traditional manifestations of state power, virtually every aspect of human existence being brought into the market, individual responsibility, and the importance of the market for the common good, human freedom, elimination of poverty and creation of wealth (Harvey; Crossley 2012: 21–37; Plehwe, Walpen, & Neunhoffer; Mirowski & Plehwe). Assisted by the rise of mass media and communications, the instant image and PR have become more prominent than ever before. In reality, “pure” neoliberalism does not happen, and state interventionism continues to prop up the market. But the ideal, with increasingly higher degrees of implementation, has been dominant and has manifested itself in the forms of leading advocates, such as Thatcher, Blair, and Cameron. Indeed, and somewhat paradoxically, we find nationalism, jingoism, imperialism, and war taken up by neoliberal states to promote or provoke, directly or indirectly, neoliberalism at home or abroad (e.g. the Falklands or the Iraq wars), or even as a reaction to the globalizing tendencies of neoliberalism.

An Anglicized version of these major global economic changes was starting to take shape in the 1970s. The New Right associated with Thatcher instigated influential discussions of “Englishness” and “Britishness” generated by, or in reaction against, the perception of 1960s permissiveness, decolonisation, immigration, and concerns about secular liberalism, alongside a stress on economic liberalism, entrepreneurialism, the rhetoric of freedom, liberty and personal responsibility (Filby). This included an emphasis on the idea that private sector rather than public sector would create wealth and, so the argument went, redistribution would be found in terms of “trickle-down” economics. This was an ideological and cultural revolution that was already beginning to take place in the 1970s, and it was accepted by its proponents that such changes brought conflict and difficulties, particularly between government and trade unions, and would risk high unemployment through controlling inflation. Yet, these issues helped the New Right into power, culminating in the so-called “Winter of Discontent” in 1978 with strikes affecting hospitals, transport, and even burials, and with press and public disillusionment towards the status quo and continuing high unemployment. Against this backdrop, Thatcher was able to come to power with enough support to challenge unions and the role of the public sector.

This also meant that the Thatcher-led group had to overthrow the Conservative establishment which by the 1970s was relatively settled in the post-War Keynesian consensus. After the Conservative Party suffered two narrow election defeats within a year in 1974, Thatcher emerged as the only credible figure to challenge Ted Heath for the leadership of the Conservatives in 1975. Influenced by the ideas of Friedrich von Hayek, and building on the cultural changes challenging traditional upper-class and bureaucratic power, these Conservative revolutionaries, came to represent new changes in economics and politics in the mid-1970s, that is the form of economic liberalism which would eventually come to be labelled “neoliberalism” (for a summary see Harvey: 56–59), even if its proponents have a tendency to shun the label. This intellectual revolution may have started among the Conservative Party, but it would become the dominant (though hardly unchallenged) ideological position across English parliamentary politics until the aftermath of the financial crash in 2007.

The Victory of Thatcher's Bible

It might seem strange to see Thatcherism and the New Right as a product of the 1960s, but Thatcher and her circle took advantage of the chaos of the discourses of nostalgia, counter-culture, radicalism, internationalism, consumerism, patriotism, and conservatism generated or intensified by that decade. And in her hands, the rhetoric of individualism and freedom would be brought into the service of arguments about economic freedom from the state and freedom, for instance, to choose your services, all of which, she claimed were grounded in the Bible, especially the New Testament (Raban; Filby; Crossley 2016: 95–126). Thatcher has been the most explicit user of the Bible of all prime ministers since the 1970s but others too were providing competing narratives, trying to come to terms with the social changes of the 1960s.

On the Left, the Marxist historian Christopher Hill, for instance, was trying to come to terms with the radicalism and a resurgent anarchism of 1968 which challenged the dominance of the Communist Left. To do this, Hill effectively read the radicals of the mid-seventeenth century “revolution from below” (including figures like Gerrard Winstanley) as interpreters of the Bible in light of the student radicalism of the 1960s (Hill 1972; Crossley 2016: 37–69). For Hill's radicals, the Bible repeatedly functions as both a revolutionary document and a serious work of English cultural heritage which protects it from going too far in the direction of flippancy, playfulness and anarchism. Moreover, the radicals of the mid-seventeenth and mid-twentieth centuries were, it was suggested, a cause for a new revolutionary hope for an Anglicized Left demoralised by Stalinism and the Soviet Union. But as the optimism of the Left gave way to the victory of Thatcherism, Hill's work on radicalism and the Bible likewise gave way to “the experience of defeat” with the perceived revolutionary impulses of the Bible suppressed and hopes pushed to a distant future (Hill 1978; 1984). In many ways, Hill's radical interpreters of the Bible represent broader tendencies involving the radical interpretation of the Bible after the 1960s as they moved further away from the centre of political power (Crossley 2016).

On the Right, the then Conservative politician, Enoch Powell, would rise to cultural prominence in 1968 through both widespread support for, and vocal opposition to, his infamous anti-immigration speech predicting a future where there will be “rivers of blood” (Powell 1992). Powell would regularly use the Bible to construct a nostalgic and implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) “white” vision of post-imperial England held together by Parliament and the (subservient) Church, but always with one eye on the British Empire and what he saw as its precursor, the Roman Empire, even if he knew such times could not be restored (cf. Hennessy: xiv–xv). Powell regularly engaged with the Bible and was especially critical of those who would read it in a sense that would have direct relevance for politics and economics. For Powell, the Bible was primarily about matters ecclesiastical and apolitical. Such an understanding would culminate in what was ostensibly a critical reading of Matthew's Gospel and Christian origins (and published in academic contexts) where Matthew's Gospel was the first gospel, a Roman gospel, and the gospel of consensus and social cohesion, bringing together competing strands in the earlier tradition, and even covering up the idea that Jesus was stoned to death by Jews through the compromise solution, namely that he was killed on a Roman cross (Powell 1991; 1994).

Powell saw much of post-war England as a failure, and this was tied up with his nostalgic reading of the past. Nevertheless, this sort nostalgic vision of an England lost would feed into Thatcher's retelling of the Bible, as she simultaneously introduced radical economic changes as part of her rhetoric of an England regained (Raban), and laid the template for what mainstream, English-based politicians think the Bible and religion really mean (Crossley 2016). Thatcher saw the Bible as a key source for emerging “Thatcherism,” as well as representing the core values of Britain and the West. Thatcher's Bible was about individualism, freedom, tolerance, rule of law, and English or British heritage, but with an especially distinctive and influential emphasis on individual wealth creation and charitable giving as a partial alternative to state provision of welfare. Among her many memorable exegetical examples in the context of interviews or speeches connecting the free market with the Bible were her claims that “no-one would remember the Good Samaritan if he'd only had good intentions; he had money as well” (Thatcher & Walden), “Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, when faced with His terrible choice and lonely vigil chose to lay down His life” (Thatcher 1988, italics original), and, using the example of 2 Thessalonians. 3.10 (“If a man will not work he shall not eat”): “we must work and use our talents to create wealth. … Indeed, abundance rather than poverty has a legitimacy which derives from the very nature of Creation” (Thatcher 1988). This Bible was constructed in sharp contrast to Marxism and Soviet Communism. The Bible, Thatcher argued, was all about promoting individual creativity; Marxism and Communism were all about crushing the individual (Thatcher 1978). More broadly, she would stress that terror in the name of religion is carried about only by people who seem to be religious but are not really whereas Marxist terrorists really are Marxist to the core (Thatcher 2003: 221). Her logic here is that, unlike the collectivist and ultimately violent essence of Marxism, religion is, at its pure heart, concerned with the individual and is thus always potentially democratic, a point she reemphasised just after 9/11 (Thatcher 2003: 217).

What is crucial to understanding the success of Thatcher is the (often unconscious) Thatcherization of culture which helps account for her electoral success. We can see this among groups and individuals who carried cultural and subcultural capital and could even be hostile to Thatcherism and Thatcher (and vice versa). One example might be the Manchester music scene between the mid-1970s and the mid-1990s where the mood steadily shifts to individualism and hedonism, and away from more leftist politics, all the while appropriating (and thus constructing) the Bible as a cultural resource (Crossley 2016: 153–79)‥

We might also think of a more specific case of the seemingly ever-popular Life of Brian which has Brian as a cipher for what Monty Python believes to be the historical Jesus (Crossley 2011; Taylor). Monty Python stands in a long liberal and sometimes radical tradition of constructing a palatable Jesus in contrast to deluded or power-hungry followers or interpreters who are effectively code for the church. The Brian/Jesus who represents cultural values assumed to be normative, or at least decent, is one who mouths the serious claim of the film: you are all individuals. But this is also a film which lampoons trade unions in the form of the different revolutionary groups as bureaucratic pedants who stop things getting done. With this in mind, we should remember that Brian and Life of Brian were not the only ones in 1979 proclaiming the importance of individuals while criticising collectivist bureaucracy: this was, after all, the year Thatcher was elected as Prime Minister. Life of Brian enters the scene at a notable and complex point in the recent history of Jesus as it was released as Thatcherism was starting to take hold and, in the aftermath of 1960s radicalism, at a time of a still relatively strong British Left. The popularity of the film in part shows the popularity of a kind of rhetoric associated with Thatcherism, no matter how uncomfortable or intentional the association might be.

Looking at the more unexpected carriers of cultural change is important because by the 1990s the Thatcher brand would become toxic in electoral terms while Thatcherism itself would continue victorious in parliamentary terms through the Labour Party (rebranded as New Labour), traditionally associated with the Left. In this respect, the Conservatives were increasingly losing credibility as the 1990s progressed. After the fall of Margaret Thatcher and the surprise 1992 General Election win of her successor, John Major, the Conservatives would become synonymous with “sleaze” (whether political, sexual, or legal) which was probably the word that stuck with the Conservative Party throughout the 1990s and was difficult for them to shake off after their huge electoral defeat to New Labour in 1997. Probably more than any other Conservative politician, Jeffrey Archer epitomised this era. Archer had been associated with various scandals throughout his political career but had always managed to escape relatively unscathed until his colourful past finally caught up with him and he was imprisoned in 2001, serving two years of a his four-year sentence. Archer is also a commercially successful novelist and, to come to terms with his experience, it was no surprise that he turned to writing. But he also turned to the Bible and in particular to one figure he thought was likewise misunderstood: Judas. In The Gospel according to Judas by Benjamin Iscariot (Archer with Maloney), Judas's life, honest motivations, and cowardly enemies curiously parallels Archer's self-understanding and perception of his own innocent suffering at the hands of others (Crossley 2016: 183–209). Among many things, Archer's Judas served his master loyally, was wrongly accused of financial improprieties, was betrayed by disciples, and was duped by the sly Scribe. Decades of literary criticism have now rightly shown the complexities involved in concepts like authorial intentions, but here we can make a case for a wooden reading of The Gospel according to Judas by Benjamin Iscariot inscribing the wishes of the author. Among the many parallels, Archer likewise believed that he served his leader loyally, was wrongly accused of financial improprieties, was betrayed by colleagues, and was duped by sly journalists. But Archer's Judas is also someone who supports a kind of prosperity Gospel which may have had some currency in the 1980s but, as Conservative spin doctors would come to realise, was not the sort of discourse that would help them back to power in English and British politics. In some ways, Archer's take on Thatcher's Bible is too closely associated with the greed-is-good and electorally toxic brand of Thatcherism and Conservatism. For the next stage of Thatcherism to be successful, it took the conversion of the parliamentary Left.

Tony Blair, David Cameron, and the Consolidation of Thatcher's Bible

Tony Blair and New Labour were crucial in both the consolidation of Thatcherism and Thatcher's Bible. Not only did Blair and the New Labour project accept the basic tenets of Thatcher's Bible, there was a rethinking of Labour's tradition of the radical Bible and radical Christianity, which had been popular among Nonconformist churches and the Catholic Left with historic ties to the Labour movement. Repeated themes in this radical tradition include land and wealth redistribution, confronting power and wealth, egalitarianism, anti-clericalism and direct access to God, the importance of conscience, prophetic critique, and even “apocalyptic” language, particularly with reference to a radical transformation of the social, economic and political order (Crossley 2016: 18–29). This also involved constructing a particularly English or British tradition of radical interpreters of the Bible (e.g., among many others, Peasants' Revolt, Wyclif and the Lollards, Gerrard Winstanley, Diggers, William Blake, F. D. Maurice, Chartists, Socialist Sunday Schools) which is often invoked to keep Marx and English or British socialism free from Stalinist contamination. This rhetoric of the radical Bible can be seen in any number of figures from Labour Party members associated with the Left and leftist causes, such as Keir Hardy, Margaret and Rachel MacMillan, Will Crooks, R.H, Tawney, George Lansbury, Ellen Wilkinson, Aneurin Bevan, Stafford Cripps, Donald Soper, Eric Heffer, and Tony Benn (Dale), as well as radical movements and figures close to, or well beyond, the Labour Party in the twentieth century, such as Rudolf Rocker and the Jewish anarchists, Ethel Mannin, George Orwell, the various British Marxist historians, and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND).

As Thatcherism was in the ascendency, Tony Benn was the established standard bearer for the radical socialist tradition in parliamentary politics. From the early 1970s onwards, Benn was championing a number of major leftist (and, at the time, often unpopular) issues, such as post-1968 feminism, syndicalism, the Miners' Strike of 1984–1985, Irish unification, anti-war(s), unilateral disarmament, and anti-hierarchical radical democratic equality (not least in the Labour Party), as well as continuing his long-standing opposition to racism and the treatment of immigrants. For Benn, the Bible was also the source of what was deemed to be a particularly English or British form of democratic socialism (e.g. Benn 1976; 1979; 2003; 2004). But by the mid-1990s, Benn was forlornly defending the place of Clause 4 (a commitment to common/public ownership or nationalisation) in the Labour Party Constitution by claiming that its sentiments go back to the Acts of the Apostles (Benn 1995). By now the Labour Party had shifted firmly to the Right and, in terms of Christianity and the Bible, a significant moment came in a Christian Socialist Movement publication (1993) edited by Christopher Bryant (who would go on to become a New Labour MP), Reclaiming the Ground: Christianity and Socialism (Bryant). Blair wrote the foreword and, behind the anti-Thatcherite polemics, the then Labour leader, John Smith, tried to bring together ideas about the free-market, individualism and the collective good that were not far removed from what Thatcher had been arguing. By the time Blair became Prime Minister in 1997, the anti-Thatcherite polemics were disappearing as fast as the radical Bible from parliamentary discourse.

Crucial to this process were Blair's attempts to rethink and reapply the language of the radical Bible to free-market economics and the War on Terror, effectively following Thatcher's anti-Soviet rhetoric. Probably the most thoroughgoing example is his much-publicised Labour Party conference speech shortly after 9/11 (Blair 2001a; 2001b). The radical Bible and radical Christianity previously had been a notable presence in the founding of the National Health Service and the development of the Welfare State under its most celebrated .government under the leadership of Clement Atlee and featuring major figures of the British Left, most notably Aneurin Bevan. But instead of ridding Britain of the “evil giants” of “want,” “squalor,” “disease,” and “ignorance,” as Labour (following the Beveridge Report) had promised in 1945 (Labour Party 1945), Blair sought to reapply this “apocalyptic” thinking “from the deserts of Northern Africa to the slums of Gaza, to the mountain ranges of Afghanistan,” functioning as a dog whistle to a Labour Party familiar with such language but nervous about supporting the imminent War on Terror. Blair would again repeat the use of such “apocalyptic” language in his career-defining speech on the eve of the Iraq War to justify invasion (Hansard 2003).

The other significant qualification made by Blair was to give the rhetoric of egalitarianism in the political Bible tradition a socially liberal spin, especially on issues relating to gender and sexuality (Crossley 2016: 210–41). Blair's legacy in this respect was apparent in the parliamentary debates over same-sex marriage in 2013 where Jesus-the-equality-and-diversity officer was invoked only as a supporter of same-sex marriage. It is worth contrasting this now liberal Jesus with the views of the socialist gay rights campaigner, Peter Tatchell (Tatchell 1996), who should be placed outside, or at most on the fringes of, parliamentary discourse. For Tatchell, marriage (whatever the gender or sexuality involved) is a conservative institution which should be legal so everyone has the right to be as miserable as the next person (Tatchell 2010; 2011a; 2011b; 2013) whereas in the case of Tatchell's Jesus, we have a potentially homo- and/or hetero-erotic figure more reminiscent of 1968, unconstrained by traditional notions of marriage and sexuality and so unlikely to turn up in Parliament.

The Blairite version of Thatcher's Bible was assumed by David Cameron and the Conservative-led coalition. It was just before, during and after the 400^th anniversary of the King James Bible in 2011 that Cameron began to nuance his take on the neoliberal Bible. The “Judeo-Christian roots of the Bible,” he claimed, are the foundation for human rights, British language and culture, equality, parliamentary democracy, the abolition of slavery, and the emancipation of women. Also among his list are the expected host of “social obligations” individuals have to one another, but also “the first forms of welfare provision” (Cameron 2010). What is constantly missing from this construction of the ideal subject under neoliberal capitalism is a reference to the role of the state in welfare provision, and in this respect Cameron out-Thatchers Thatcher. He has even gone as far as to claim that Jesus founded the partial alternative to state provision of welfare, namely the concept of Big Society (Cameron 2014a), Cameron's onetime flagship theme. Indeed, Cameron was explicit that this concerned “the changes that we're making in welfare.”

In his 2014 Easter message (Cameron 2014b), Cameron argued that the heart of Christianity is “love thy neighbour” which made him think about “the Alpha courses run in our prisons.” Of course, the specifics of the Alpha Course and its overt evangelical, charismatic, and proselytising conversion programme are not mentioned explicitly, and there is certainly no mention of their interests in speaking in tongues or whether homosexuality can be cured. This would be far too alien to contemporary liberalism for a mainstream politician to discuss. Instead, Cameron sees the usefulness of citing Alpha in his speech to support his own views on charity overriding state provision. Alpha thus epitomises “love thy neighbour” for its “work with offenders to give them a new life inside and outside prison” just like “the soup kitchens and homeless shelters run by churches.” Cameron adds that the “same spirit” was shown during the storms earlier in 2014: “churches became refuges, offering shelter and food, congregations raised funds and rallied together, parish priests even canoed through their villages to rescue residents. They proved, yet again, that people's faith motivates them to do good deeds.”

This especially heavy emphasis on the subcontracting of the state came after the government had been criticised over handling of the flooding and after there had been sustained criticisms (not least by church leaders) over the rise of foodbank use and, more recently, after Jeremy Corbyn's criticism of the increase in homelessness. We might add to these allegations of complicity in creating war-torn countries and it is notable that Cameron has (as we will see) used the Bible to justify military intervention. From the logic of Cameron's Bible, the rise in foodbank use (or those helping the homeless or those prepared to help the maimed) is actually to be deemed a Good Thing—Big Society in action and what Jesus himself would have endorsed. Beneath the vagueness, the consensual rhetoric, and the praise of canoeing priests, Cameron's Bible and Cameron's Christianity provide the authority for his government's austerity agenda. The historic liberal understanding of Bible, Christianity and religion as representing tolerance, freedom, democracy, rights, rule of law etc. has, as Yvonne Sherwood has shown (Sherwood 2006; 2011), been a staple of English-language political discourse for centuries. However, the emphasis on using such sources of authority to promote the subcontracting of the provision of state welfare, while simultaneously promoting the militaristic state, is an intensification of the template laid down by Margaret Thatcher and qualified by Tony Blair.

The Return of the Radical Bible?

Cameron's neoliberal tweaking of the Thatcher-Blair understandings of the Bible and Christianity are part of reaction to the 2008 crash and connected with the common rhetoric of blaming welfare or over-subsidised education for the financial state of the nation. The reaction from the Left, however, would eventually see the return of radical understandings of the Bible and Christianity, and it is striking that Jeremy Corbyn was propelled forward by a Labour membership tired of compromising with the Conservative Party on welfare. But this movement hardly came out of the blue, even if it was surprising to virtually all commentators. The momentum of this movement owed something to Occupy, which, among other non-parliamentary leftist groups, had been preserving the radical Bible. One of the most prominent images used in Occupy London Stock Exchange was Jesus throwing out the moneychangers, such as in protesters' visual portrayals (Hill 2011). Veteran Marxists like Terry Eagleton suggested that the protesters were effectively followers of Jesus but went further by arguing that Jesus' actions in the Temple showed that he “was at one with a later Jewish prophet, Karl Marx, whose concept of alienation involves just such a break between the product and the producer.”

Another more immediate precursor to the return of the radical Bible was Russell Brand's rise to political prominence (including a clandestine meeting with Ed Miliband during the 2015 General Election) where he foregrounded his Jesus-chic and the idea of Jesus as the ultimate revolutionary, alongside related understandings of any number of religions (Brand 2013; 2014). In his book, Revolution (Brand 2014), Brand's use of the Bible is standard enough in the tradition of English radical Christianity, even if he uses his own distinctive language. He prioritised the story of Jesus in the Temple, which is understood to be an attack on the influence on public life of a corrupt financial elite, and proclaimed Cameron a hypocrite for promoting privatizing tendencies in the National Health Service and thus not, Brand claimed, practising the teachings of Jesus. Brand's sustained use of Jesus, the Bible and Christianity was largely ignored (or occasionally dismissed as self-indulgent) in the media, who instead went for easier targets and anything implied to be non-English/British-sounding or liberal Hollywood to discredit him (e.g. Hare Krishna, Hinduism, Buddhism, mysticism, transcendentalism, pantheism, and whatever other –isms a journalist or reviewer may or may not have heard about) (Crossley 2016: 297–305).

What is significant about the reluctance to attack Christianity and the Bible in the media is that use of the Bible can provide a degree of protection, if its use is perceived to be authentic. Brand is easy for the media to dismiss in this respect. Corbyn, however, is not and at worst there were plenty of jokey and ironic comments about him being comparable to that other JC. The rise of the movement has predictably been attacked for many things, but it is striking that Corbyn went straight to the Bible and radical Christianity and so the summer of 2015 saw the return to front-line parliamentary discourse of radical understandings of the Bible, Christianity and religion that had not been so prominent since the heyday of Tony Benn (Crossley 2016: 306–18). “Revivalist meetings” was a common description of the popular Corbyn meetings (often held in churches). His parliamentary ally and self-identified atheist, Clive Lewis, claimed that there was a “religious element” to Corbyn's support (Wintour & Watt). A rhetorical combination of socialism, nostalgia, religion, biblical allusions, William Blake and Jerusalem, a specifically English or British tradition, and so on, was also easy enough to find, including some sympathetic voices from the small “c” conservative Right (e.g. Hitchens; Oborne).

By the time Corbyn had been elected leader of the Labour Party, his close parliamentary ally, Cat Smith, was openly claiming that “Jesus was a radical socialist” and, as one of her examples, used the image popular in Occupy: Jesus “turning over the tables in the temple” (Bennett). Corbyn himself began using the Bible immediately. In his major television interview on the eve of the 2015 Labour conference, Andrew Marr began explaining who John the Baptist was, but Corbyn immediately interjected, claiming he knew perfectly well who he was and that “I am very familiar with the Bible. I was brought up with the Bible” (Marr & Corbyn). Corbyn is presumably fully aware of the importance of this source of cultural and political authority.

Indeed, Corbyn has been making regular reference to the parable of the Good Samaritan, including in his victory speech (Labour Party 2015), his interview with Andrew Marr (Marr & Corbyn), and his speech at the Labour Party conference (Corbyn). He has used it to promote his distinctive stance on welfare (e.g., “we don't pass by on the other side of those people rejected by an unfair welfare system”; “we don't pass by on the other side while the poor lie in the gutter”). But the Good Samaritan was also used to connect Corbyn with a specifically British or English socialism, a connection that was typical of his mentor, Tony Benn. It is not without reason that the biblical allusion in his conference speech came shortly after the somewhat manufactured outrage levelled at Corbyn for not singing the national anthem at a Battle of Britain memorial service: “Solidarity and not walking by on the other side of the street when people are in trouble … these shared majority British values that are the fundamental reason why I love this country and its people” (Corbyn).

What is also significant about this is that it tells us what Corbyn does not represent. The Good Samaritan is probably the most common biblical allusion in English party politics today and, for those with ears to hear, it is a parable present in the battle for the soul of the Labour Party and cross-party views on militarism. In addition to Thatcher's examples, Cameron, for instance, has alluded to the example of the Good Samaritan to justify any future military intervention against ISIS in his promotion of British values and state monopoly on violence: “we cannot just walk on by if we are to keep this country safe … we have to confront this menace … we will do so in a calm, deliberate way but with an iron determination” (Cameron 2014c). In his speech supporting the bombing of Syria, Hilary Benn, the most high profile Labour frontbencher hostile to Corbyn's agenda, justified intervention with the claim that “we never have, and we never should, walk by on the other side of the road” (Hansard 2015). The very same parable, and the very same sentiment within the parable, can be read to come to the exact opposite position on military intervention which shows how exegesis is driven by a given political ideology while the biblical text simultaneously provides the authority.

Concluding Remarks

We have seen, then, how use of the Bible in English political discourse provides an indication of dominant political trends, with economic and social liberalism being marked features of parliamentary use. Today, Cameron's Bible and Corbyn's Bible are competing discourses dealing with the impact of the 2008 financial crash but both with more deep-rooted histories too. The return of the radical Bible to Parliament is, obviously, as striking as the emergence of the Corbyn movement in mainstream politics. Like the returning radical Bible, the Corbyn movement was pushed forward by popular non- or extra-parliamentary support. Clearly, then, the longevity of this Bible depends on, among other things, the fate of the Corbyn movement. 2008 has ushered in the most volatile period in contemporary English and British politics in recent decades, and we have seen an unexpected Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition followed by the near-demise of the Liberal Democrats, an intensification of Thatcherite economic policies, an apparent increase in support for economic and social liberalism over the long term, an SNP-dominated Scotland with a strong anti-austerity agenda, the biblically-tinged nostalgia of so-called Blue Labour and Red Tories, and a socialist Labour leader with a huge mandate from Party members and supporters but with minimal support among his fellow Labour Members of Parliament. Many of the ideas associated with all these different movements and moments are contradictory, and voting patterns do not necessarily reflect the old binaries of Right and Left. Still present in this contemporary chaos is the Bible, which remains an authority for different ideological positions. It is by no means clear which position—or which new Thatcher—will come to dominate party political discourse. Perhaps the only reasonable prediction is that the Bible will support whichever one does so.