Pimlico Journal recently carried an anxious piece by Don Fox warning against the supposed rise of “Christian Nationalism” in Britain, prompted by Danny Kruger’s defection to Reform and the appointment of the Cambridge academic James Orr as an adviser to Nigel Farage. Its essential caution — that overt moral or theological campaigning is unlikely to win elections — is entirely sound. Most voters care less about the metaphysics of the nation than about the state of their mortgage, their street, and their borders. But almost every other aspect of the piece’s argument is confused. It borrows an imported panic, misreads the facts before it, and confuses prudence for dishonesty.
“Christian Nationalism” is an American spectre, not a British one. The term was concocted by the coastal left in the United States to frighten its own base and has since become a convenient label for anyone on the centre-right whose Christianity extends beyond private sentiment. What the American left believes Christian Nationalism believed is, in reality, believed only by a tiny fringe. Yet they mendaciously assert (or perhaps even believe) it is the dominant tendency in the Republican Party and about to strip everyone of their rights. They said this about the pre-Trump GOP as much as they continue to say it of the Trump-transformed one.
Christian Nationalism barely exists even in America, but it certainly doesn’t exist in Britain. The country’s professing Christian MPs — including Labour frontbencher Wes Streeting — are a distinctly calm bunch by global standards. The idea that two men of reasonably thoughtful disposition, one an MP for Wiltshire and the other a lecturer at Cambridge, herald the coming of a confessional coup d’état is absurd.
Still, Fox suggests that Reform’s association with these figures, and its faint connections to now-mainstream American conservatives such as JD Vance, signals a turn towards political Christianity. No evidence is offered because none exists. Reform’s focus remains exactly where the public wants it: shutting down illegal migration, reviving the economy, sorting out energy policy, and restoring some vestige of competence to the NHS. The party’s priorities are civic, not sectarian.
Fox’s narrative of Christians in politics offers a distinctly negative and antagonistic take, particularly for a writer professing his own Christian conservatism. A more accurate way of interpreting the Kruger and Orr appointments is that Christians are simply getting on with being a productive, creative minority within a post — or non-Christian society. Far from plotting theocracy, they are working to hold together Britain’s fraying civic fabric. Look at who runs schools, soup kitchens, care homes, or starts charities to address social problems: very frequently it is Christians of one stripe or another. Not the only ones, to be sure, but the contribution is conspicuous.
Nor is it true that social conservatives are forever itching to impose their moral views. On the contrary, while there has been little agreement with the liberal cultural settlement of recent decades, there has been almost no organised attempt to reverse it. The priorities of the Christian centre-right in politics are overwhelmingly pragmatic: the restoration of border control, the deportation of illegal migrants, a serious programme of housebuilding and infrastructure renewal, and the fostering of economic growth to support families. These are the real moral questions of statecraft: the care of the polity, not the policing of bedrooms. To suggest that Reform risks being hijacked by bible-thumpers is to mistake moral seriousness for moralism.
Fox describes Looking for Growth as “decidedly non-communitarian” — but what could be more communitarian than unleashing growth and development so that young people have jobs, homes, and the means to build families? His criticism betrays a false dichotomy between prosperity and community, as though one must choose between being rich and looking after one’s own.
“Community sounds nice, but being rich sounds nicer,” he writes, but prosperity depends on community. The trust, order, and shared identity that sustain a prosperous economy are not spontaneous; they rest on moral and cultural foundations. The liberal managerialist imagines that social cohesion is optional, that wealth can be conjured by deregulation alone. The last thirty years have shown the opposite: erode community and prosperity follows it down the drain. Import vast numbers of net beneficiaries and it gets even worse. It is precisely because we value prosperity and community that borders must be enforced, housing built, and infrastructure renewed.
Fox and others should take less notice of the flourishing online grifterdom on the American right
His description of the debates over euthanasia is equally confused. He attacks Christians for using the slippery-slope argument because most of the public are in favour of death-on-demand in principle. But why would anyone attack a proposal on the parts of it the public support, rather than on the parts on which they are more sceptical? Polls show that while most Britons back assisted suicide in principle, support plummets when they are confronted with the practical consequences and the experience of countries that have legalised it. In every jurisdiction where euthanasia has been introduced, safeguards have failed, the grounds for eligibility have been expanded, and the voluntary principle has been eroded. These are the facts that voters should know and which most, once they do, wish to avoid replicating here.
Politics is a shared space: one speaks to the public in terms the public can understand. Christians, like everyone else, have every right to frame their reasoning in the shared civic idiom. Fox seems to think it disingenuous to do so, while simultaneously admitting that overtly theological argument would be electorally suicidal. He attacks Christians for advancing arguments that slot easily into a secular mindset rather than presenting their internal theological rationale, but the aim is to persuade constructively, not to assert uselessly. When Christians act prudently, Fox suspects them of dishonesty.
Many secular liberals, incidentally, respect that Christians are often the ones leading the defence of the vulnerable — the sick, the poor, the disabled — against the fashionable drift toward a utilitarian view of life and death. Some even admit, a little sheepishly, that perhaps the non-religious have not pulled their weight in that fight.
In practical terms, the article’s advice is redundant. Reform already concentrates on immigration, energy, and growth. No one in that party, or any other, is proposing an anti-abortion crusade or a moral purity law, and the electorate is rightly wary of sermonising. Christian conservatives nonetheless have a role in reminding democratic politics of its moral horizon. The state exists to uphold human dignity, protect the weak, and advance the common good. Those principles are not a distraction from economic revival, nor a barrier to it, but the foundation upon which it depends.
I think Fox and others should take less notice of the flourishing online grifterdom on the American right. Perhaps, owing to the erosion of quality in traditional media and commentary, these people’s influence is growing but conservatives (and our fellow-travellers) should resist these tendencies and gatekeep aggressively against them.
Fox’s analysis of where the electorate actually are is spot-on, which makes his wasting his powder on a baseless bogeyman all the more baffling. All parties should be recruiting high-calibre and competent people to find solutions to the countless social and political problems this country faces. If Kruger and Orr can persuade competent figures to work for a party that has a serious chance of running the next government, all the better.
