Anthony Painter

After some reflection, I’ve decided to wind up this blog. It’s been incredibly good fun and has helped me to think a lot of things through. But there comes a time when you have to consider whether things can be taken further. I’ve come to the conclusion that I can’t do so without devoting an unmanageable amount of time to it or by taking it in a direction that I don’t want.

Thank you to the tens of thousands of readers this blog has had over two and half years. Thank you to other people who have contributed blogs to the site- Stephen Adshead warrants a particular mention. And thank you for those who have helped in so many other ways. Blue Impressions built this version of the site- hire them.

I’ll be moving on to other things- ready for the next challenge and all that. Generally, I’ll be reducing my output. My LabourList column will become a fortnightly rather than weekly affair. But I’ll still be around and hope to make a real contribution to seeing Labour back in office again and the back of this Coalition who seem hell-bent on a destructive path to closing the budget deficit. They will do so mainly by attacking groups who are voiceless and so have no means of political defence. It’s underhand and utterly politically motivated.

I’ll look to make those arguments but also challenging arguments about how Labour must change. If it doesn’t then the Coalition’s political attack on a Britain where we really are all in this together will become a ten year rather than a five year project. The damage will double or worse. I left Manchester with a spring in my step. The new leader and the team around him genuinely understand the scale of the challenge. One message I hope they will take on board- and I believe they have- is that they are in charge now. They don’t owe anybody anything. Lead and do what is necessary whosoever may grumble along the way.

Anyway, this blog started off as a travelog of my time in the US following the Democratic primary. I shifted it onto British politics. I have tried to be honest and objective yet with an underlying ethos- a personal political philosophy that in the public square, the workplace, and in the realm of collective provision everyone should have a stake and have a say. Whether that political philosophy is democratic socialist, ethical socialist, democratic republican (my personal preference), or radical liberal is open to question. I see it is as Labour, plain and simple. It doesn’t particuarly matter which of these labels you apply. What’s important is that the struggle continues. 

Luckily there are others in the blogosphere who are well placed to do that- LabourList, Left Foot Forward, Labour Uncut, Next Left, Liberal Conspiracy and Hopi Sen spring to mind. There are many others. The left is about to enter a period of enormous creativity. I hope it can be strategic and ruthless also. Winning the argument or the ‘battle of ideas’ is not enough. You have to win the political struggle too. 

Onwards…..   

by William French

“Fog in Channel – Continent cut off”. The old apocryphal headline may no longer apply in this age of Eurostar and instant digital communications, but its spirit remains all too present in British politics. David Cameron’s government wishes to pull out of the European Convention on Human Rights, and even refused to sign up to a new EU directive against human trafficking because of its qualified majority voting requirements. The Liberal Democrats are both unwilling and unable to exercise any restraining influence, either here or on the issue of the Tories’ unsavoury far-right allies in the European Parliament.

So far, so predictable. It suits both Cameron and Clegg to keep quiet about Europe; the former avoids evoking memories of the 1990s Tory civil war and Maastricht “bastards,” while the latter draws a veil over yet another colossal Lib Dem sellout. But the issue was also hardly raised at all in the Labour leadership campaign, except for Ed Balls trumpeting his opposition to Britain joining the euro. He may well have been vindicated on that front, but in truth a much wider debate is needed, and Ed Miliband needs to show that Labour’s “new generation” is serious and committed towards shaping a progressive European agenda.

Labour has had a conflicted relationship with “Europe” and its various stages of political union, ever since Ernie Bevin rejected Jean Monet’s 1950s plan for a European Coal and Steel Community because “the Durham Miners wouldn’t buy it”. Political historian Peter Hennessy has explained that this opposition reflected both the workers’ concerns that they would lose control of the just-newly nationalised heavy industries, but also how those same men had fought across Europe just a decade before as the Durham Light Infantry, and would be loath to share any form of power or sovereignty with their former foes.

More than half a century later, these old suspicions and enmities have dwindled but Labour has remained restricted by a parochial Weltanschauung. Tony Blair promised in 1997 to put Britain “at the heart of Europe” but rapidly found himself constrained first by New Labour’s timidity towards the tabloid press (remember The Sun’s headline describing then-German finance minister Oskar Lafontaine as “the most dangerous man in Europe” over tax harmonization proposals?), and then by the toxic fallout from the Iraq War and Donald Rumsfeld’s distinctions between “Old” and “New” Europe.

Partly as a result of his closeness with George W. Bush, Blair became viewed with especial suspicion by the leaders of Labour’s fellow socialist and social democrat parties on the Continent. Relationships with the French Parti Socialiste were always tense because of Blair’s (understandable) efforts to develop a good relationship with President Chirac and indeed worsened when the Anglo-French ties soured over Iraq. The nadir was Blair’s (bilingual) YouTube message of congratulations to Nicolas Sarkozy upon his election in 2007 – which makes for even more uncomfortable viewing now than it did then, given the French President’s racist expulsion of Roma families and his mercurial arrogance.

Despite an initial good rapport with Germany’s Gerhard Schröder in the late 1990s and excited talk of a “neue Mitte” to accompany the Third Way, New Labour’s relationship with the Social Democrats also suffered from Iraq and the wider suspicion that Blair would always side with the US rather than Europe. And the close personal ties Blair forged with José Maria Aznar and Silvio Berlusconi (the holidays! the bandanas!) only served to strengthen suspicions amongst Labour’s European sister parties that he was never really “one of us” – which also explains the distinct lack of enthusiasm in this constituency for his ill-fated bid to become President of the new European Council last year.

Gordon Brown meanwhile had consciously cultivated a Eurosceptic reputation when Chancellor. Once Prime Minister, he became a belated convert to EU cooperation and coordination, particularly amid the financial crisis and Britain’s presidency of the G20, but he was also sadly not averse to occasional attempts at populist rhetoric. His infamous call for “British jobs for British workers” not only backfired domestically but also dismayed European observers and friends who saw it as yet another example of British insularity.

So Brother Ed has much to do to develop good relationships and ties with Labour’s natural allies in Europe. And this should indeed be a priority. In his inaugural speech he recalled both the humiliations of the Major government’s “beef war” with the EU in the mid-90s, and the far more serious and shaming failure of Europe to prevent genocide in Bosnia – forever encapsulated by the capitulation of the Dutch “peacekeepers” without a shot fired in Srebrenica in July 1995.

Britain can never again be on the sidelines, forever obstructing, carping and blocking – and Labour can never again reject and alienate its natural allies when the problems and challenges all progressives face transcend national borders and regulators. The turbulent events of the past few years have shown that despite being outside the eurozone, British economic and social prosperity remains dependent on effective cooperation and strategic coordination with our EU partners, whether on regulating immigration, tackling tax evasion or responding to the wider demands and dynamics of a globalised economy.

At the same time, and as was so eloquently argued here last week, social democracy and the whole European centre-left is in electoral crisis. The SPD is out of office and under pressure from the Greens. Sweden’s Social Democrats remain in opposition as the far-right makes gains. The French PS is riven by internecine strife and risks squandering the talents of its two best-placed presidential hopefuls, Ségolène Royal and Dominique Strauss-Kahn, because of (a) institutionalized sexism, and (b) suspicion that DSK’s tenure as head of the IMF has made him too “Anglo-Saxon”. The Italian left in all its various hues cannot even land convincing blows against Berlusconi in his dotage and has effectively ceded the main opposition role to his former ally (and former Fascist) Gianfranco Fini of the Alleanza Nazionale.

In contrast, Labour’s own situation does not perhaps look quite so bad (up 10% in the polls since the election defeat) – but rather than taking this as an excuse for schadenfreude, it shows how pooling resources and trying to develop a joint strategy is a win-win option for the centre-left on both sides of the Channel.

The irony is of course that there is one Labour politician who is uniquely placed to influence this debate. Not former Foreign Secretary David Miliband, not former EU trade commissioner Peter Mandelson, but Catherine Ashton, the EU’s new “foreign minister” or, to give her her full title, High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. In her unassuming way (and despite facing condescension, sexism and snobbery from many in Brussels), Ashton has been quietly establishing her reputation as an effective operator since taking up the job last December – most recently, by persuading Serbia to drop a case at the International Court of Justice regarding Kosovo’s declaration of independence, thus paving the way for further reconciliation and European integration in the Balkans. That so few people are aware of Ashton’s role and responsibilities speaks volumes about the narrow focus of British politics and journalism. But if Ed Miliband wants to make Labour’s voice heard again in Europe – and to use Europe as another means of skewering the Con Dems, she should be at the top of his “must call” list. Our Euro-vision must never again get lost in translation.

William French is a Labour member and former foreign correspondent.

No-one has a monopoly on wisdom and 100,000s of union members and Labour party members today chose- by a whisker- to try Ed Miliband’s liberal social democracy. In so doing they have rejected Blairism. The party’s platform will in no way now resemble the market accommodating, state reformist, strong law and order state, and international interventionism outlined in Tony Blair’s memoirs. That version of New Labour is no longer a contender as a governing philosophy. Not on the left anyway.

Gordon Brown never took on the authoritarian aspect of New Labour- and indeed tried to extend it- so the illiberal element of Brownism has now gone also. In fact, for the first time in living memory, all three main parties are socially liberal and have a liberal reformist instinct on criminal justice. Labour could have continued with the authoritarian arms race but Ed Miliband has chosen not to do so. the Coalition created the political opportunity to reject that agenda and Ed Miliband has taken it. This is an enormous shift of British politics in a liberal direction. The importance of this should not be understated. Liberalism has won against authoritarianism- for now.

However, Ed Miliband adopts Brownite social democracy in all its essential elements. He favours a strategic interventionist state in expanding future growth prospects. He will resist in full-blooded fashion the Coalition’s cuts. And Labour will continue to see a more significant role for the state as a redistributionist counter-weight to market injustice. Expect a restorationist manifesto for the party at the next general election with regards public services. In all these respects the Labour party remains the party of Gordon Brown instead of Tony Blair.

The next election will be a straight fight between liberal conservatism and liberal social democracy. It is impossible to predict which will be the winner at this stage. Once again the democratic republicans in British politics- who are more concerned about addressing power imbalances over formal equality and are consequently suspicious of market and state power- have lost out. They can console themselves with the fact that Ed Miliband is a genuine democratic reformer with a commitment to constitutional reform, greater localism and the living wage.
So the course is now set for the next few years. It is clear. Yet the outcome of the two-way liberal social democracy v liberal conservatism is anything but clear.

The following four Audioboos are an interview with an anonymous Rwandan blogger, ‘Nkunda’. He talks about the day when eight of his uncles were massacred, he criticises the Kagame government for abuses of human rights and failure to introduce real democracy, and questions the role of major donors in the country such as Britain and their willingness to turn a blind eye to the actions of the Kagame regime both within Rwanda and in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

This interview shows the power of blogging and social media. The blogger has a voice and is able to get a different perspective out to the world. I would really recommend listening to it whether you have deep knowledge of Rwanda and DRC or not. It’s important.

Part 1

We talk about his life and Rwanda and the atrocities that ‘Nkunda’ has experienced and what he found when he returned to Rwanda from exile. He also talks about the reality of Rwanda today- an oppressive reality.

Part 2

We cover the potential similarity of Rwanda and other African nations which have gone down an anti-democratic, ant-human rights path. We talk about the reality of oppression within Rwanda.

Part 3

This deals with the relationship between Britain and other major donors and Rwanda. The feeling is that human rights and democracy are being left out of the discussion. We also discuss the situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo where 5 million people have lost their lives in the conflict.

Part 4

We talk about the life of a blogger in Rwanda for a blogger who is critical of the government. We talk a little more about the DRC also.

I hope that people find this interview fascinating. It is a powerful story and an important perspective. Hopefully, you will spread the message so that there is a fully balanced discussion about the future of Rwanda.

Just a short post to make a very simple point. The winner of Labour’s leadership election tomorrow has won the argument. That’s it. They deserve full and fulsome support. But just as the Democrats are able to unite after long and often brutal primary campaigns, so must Labour.

I have consistently made the argument that Labour has a far greater distance to travel than it is has been capable of admitting to. What will not help the party make that journey is a new bout of factional posturing. Labour can not afford a new version of Brown v Blair style factionalism. It was costly in government. It will be devastating in opposition.

Whatever the the flaws in the leadership election system- and they are considerable (whenever I tell people that I had four votes they respond with disbelief and it’s easy to understand why)- no candidate chose the rules. So unity will be the key tomorrow. Whoever has won deserves the opportunity to make the most of their opportunity with full and fulsome support.

In return I hope the new leader will realise the scale of the task before them and show openness and humility. Their success could well depend on it. But they have won the election, won the argument, and they have won the right to lead. He who wins, wins.

What does Ted Turner have to do to get some respect? He’s one of the US’ most successful media figures. He established CNN. He married Jane Fonda. He is the largest private landowner in the US *and* he’s one of the nation’s leading philanthropists, donating $1billion to enable the establishment of the UN Foundation which promotes the UN’s work.

He turns up to a plush event hosted by the Foundation in the opulent surroundings of The Plaza hotel on the south side of New York’s Central Park where he is platformed with Queen Rania, Jeffrey Sachs, and…Bob Geldof. In an event rather more reminiscent of a Wall Street networking party than a meet-up focusing on global poverty, up steps the Irish singer-songwriter and global poverty campaigner to give one of his impassioned trademark speeches complete with lectern thumping.

Half way through the extemporised address Geldof turns to the subject of making Africa an economic success by 2040. Glancing across at Turner, he waves a dismissive thumb in the media magnate’s direction. “Of course I won’t be around. And nor will Turner. Turner will be long gone.” The remarks didn’t go down well at all with Mr Turner. It was all he could do not to walk out. Surely $1billion should get you a little respect?

Just got back from an event with a number of NGOs where they reviewed progress made as a result of this Summit. They were pretty scathing but then awarded the world leaders a C in the main (there was one E grade.) I guess that’s how these things go.

While at the press conference I did get a chance to have an interesting chat with Ray Offenheiser who is President of Oxfam America about using aid as leverage for transparency, better governance and a stronger democracy. It is the direction that USAID will be heading in and will be a key component of the Obama approach.

The key to this is developing the capacity of aid recipients through a concept that regular readers of this blog will recognise in another context- ownership. Oxfam’s argument is that information about aid must be improved, capacity of both civil society and governance mechanisms must be developed, and there must be a degree of control given to aid recipients. This last point is critical- local actors are better able to identify their needs and by entrusting them their capacity will develop further.

The Europeans are far further along this road than the US.

This all raises the obvious question of conditionality- should aid be linked to good governance, openness and transparency? Ray Offenheiser made the point that that is fine in principle but in practice is a little more complex as you can end up only rewarding those who are already good.

It’s an important consideration. It is easy to put failed states to one side (there’s little way to spend aid in any constructive way) and then you have the superstars such as Ghana. Then there’s lots of states in the middle of those two poles. What do you do with them? Get too rigid and it ends up being self-defeating and you ignore important needs that can be met. But do you just accept that a certain amount of corruption, misdirection, and inefficiency will be part of the learning process? These aren’t easy questions. If the balance is drawn in the right way then strong incentives can improve openness, transparency and good governance. What is clear is that aid can lever positive change but only if it’s calibrated in the right way.

Oxfam America’s report on ownership ‘Capacity: helping countries lead’ is available here and really worth a read.

Also, I was sent a video by the development NGO Bond which presents the British tradition of giving in relation to the Millennium Development Goals. It’s worth a watch and it’s here.

A blog on the UN Millennium Development Goal Summit should start with a call to arms. You know the type of thing. We are at a crossroads. It’s now or never. The world must act. We have a moral responsibility. Billions are in poverty and millions will die unnecessarily from preventable diseases. We can’t just stand by and watch. There is a once in a lifetime political opportunity to act. Leaders must show courage. Do we want future generations to look back and say ‘how could you stand by a do nothing?’ I could say all this and you will instantly switch off (confession: this type of rhetoric leaves me fairly cold as well.)

Here in New York, that sort of stuff flows through press conferences, briefings, tweets and rallies. It trips just as easily out of the mouths of UN/multilateral development agency officials as it does out of the mouths of politicians and campaigners. They are right of course. We can make a difference to lives of countless millions and even billions not least by giving them a chance of life in the first place. So we should. That’s it.

But actually there is something of importance going on here that lies beneath the rhetoric. When you peel away the recycled and fairly turgid verbiage, there is the real mission of development. (And as I write someone has announced that we are in a ‘truly historic week.’) Development is a process rather than an event. Actually, it’s a series of processes that interlink and intersect.

Achievement of the millennium development goals is uneven but significant progress is being made. Why? Well, it’s largely because of the goals themselves which have defined progress and focused minds. So aid budgets have increased and there has been an increasing focus on enabling poorer countries to help themselves. And this is a key point. Much of the growth in investment in development has actually come from the poorest nations themselves.

Domestic revenues in African nations grew from $129.1billion in 2002 to a peak of $472.2billion in 2008 before falling backwards again in the face of the economic crisis. At the same time, overseas development aid has increased by $22billion. So 16 times the amount has come from better revenue collection, taxation policy, and public investment than came from foreign aid. When you consider this huge scale difference, does aid matter?

In addition, when you consider the economic benefits that are to had from foreign direct investment in primary and secondary industry as well as in national infrastructure, is aid not an ineffective and expensive answer to the development question? Many are asking these questions. The argument goes that aid is necessarily inefficient, wasteful and induces corruption. Atlantic monthly had a good recent feature on China’s investment in Africa as an possible alternative approach to aid. Despite the fact that such a conclusion would be very tempting for Atlantic, it concludes by quoting a Congolese lawyer:

“The problem is not who is the latest buyer of our commodities,” he replied. “The problem is to determine what is Africa’s place in the future of the global economy, and up to now, we have seen very little that is new. China is taking the place of the West: they take our raw materials and they sell finished goods to the world What Africans are getting in exchange, whether it is roads or schools or finished goods, doesn’t really matter. We remain under the same old schema: our cobalt goes off to China in the form of dusty ore and returns here in the form of expensive batteries.”

When you scratch beneath the surface of the anti-aid arguments, there is not much to them as they pose a false either/or question of aid v foreign direct investment/private capital investment.

The potential drawbacks of FDI are obvious though with wise governance can be mitigated. The risk is that Africa’s national resources will be plundered, the benefits consumed or placed in tax havens, and once the resources are gone, all that could be left is debt and little development. Corruption follows money wherever that money comes from. Aid can be wasteful and can lead to corruption. Or it can be used as a lever to improve governance and put to the general public good rather than simply chasing commercial gain.

Moreover, aid is more steady and that matters- especially when times are hard. In the global financial crisis, private investment (FDI and other private flows) collapsed from $60billion to $28billion in 2 years. Aid stayed steady. Domestic revenues fell by over $100billion. The aid relationship between western governments and the poorest nations is important in determining the efficiency of aid investment, rooting out corruption, and developing governance that can put public investment on a surer footing. So aid, domestic revenue, and private investment all play their part.

So some may wish to paint aid as the international equivalent of welfare dependency. But it’s an essential part of the mix as long as it’s transparent and makes real and sustainable public investments. The UN 0.7% of GDP target for aid is an arbitrary figure but at least it focuses minds. The broader millennium development goals are as important if not more important (for example, gender equality and maternal health are critical to providing hope, stability and opportunity to Africa.) Without aid, development will be more unstable, unpredictable, and less geared towards universal rather than commercial good. We should continue to increase our aid investments because we can. And because it will make an enormous difference to millions of lives.

The very nice people at Oxfam have shipped me over to New York in order to cover the UN Millennium Development Goal Summit. Things start in earnest tomorrow but today things kicked off with an event addressed by the great and good organised by 1Goal/ Global Campaign for Education.

Queen Rania and Gordon Brown with Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala were the star attractions. The presence of Gordon Brown as a headline speaker meant that Andrew Mitchell, Secretary of State for International Development, felt a pressing need to emphasise that the audience, comprising the type of policy officials and campaigners you get at this sort of thing, that they had just seen the former Prime Minister of the UK. It will get even more confusing when he is joined here by the current Deputy Prime Minister later in the week. But Mitchell was absolutely clear that the UK will hit the 0.7% of GDP UN aid commitment by 2013.

There is a very serious point to all this of course. Education is central to development. There is no enlightened commercial interest that will close the chasm between the level of provision that is needed to meet the Millennium Development Goal target of all children receiving primary education by 2015 and existing provision. This requires major investment from both the wealthiest nations and by poorer countries themselves. And the financial crisis is making that target tougher going- $4.6 billions are being stripped out of education budgets as I write.

So while it’s easy to get all cynical, this is all rather important. If poor countries commit 20% of budgets to education and rich countries increase their aid to basic education from $4billion to $16billion then that MDG goal will be in sight. The consequence? 171 million people could be lifted out of poverty if all children left school with basic reading skills. That’s a lot of hope.

David Green has an excellent piece on LabourList about how tough he has found the papal visits given the attacks that the Catholic community has had to sustain from those whom they thought were comrades. This agony will go way beyond the Labour party. Let me start with a declaration: homosexuals should be absolutely equal to any other citizen in every conceivable respect, paedophilia is repulsive as is covering up or excusing it in any way, and unprotected sex will spread AIDS and so use of condoms should be encouraged. I believe in absolute gender equality. As someone on the left, none of this should require saying but you have to if you are to be able to say anything about religion or Catholicism. That done, let’s move onto the main business (and for the record I happen to be a very lapsed Catholic who doesn’t believe in God- just so you know where I’m coming from.)

The attacks on Catholicism this week have been nothing short of ignorant and offensive. Those who consider themselves to be humanists should give some more thought to what human nature really is. It is narrow-minded, spiteful, and intellectually supercilious. It is also compassionate, respectful and empathetic. I have a greater degree of respect for those who manage to display the latter aspects of human nature over those who display the former. Too many have been conducting themselves in a manner akin to the former rather than the latter.

It is not enough that the Catholic church is in crisis in the UK. The church (Vatican) for its part has acted criminally, ignorantly, and without compassion- with little regard to Jesus Christ in other words. But its opponents just can not resist using that to strike out at their real target- the place of faith within human nature and experience. If humanism is about humanity and human nature it seems to conveniently ignore some of the most significant aspects. Most particularly, it seems blind to the basic human need to contemplate eternity- which is necessarily beyond science. The scientific method breaks down without a cause and an effect and eternity has no cause. We are a pretty greedy species. That we exist is not enough. We want all the answers. Some turn to faith at that point. Others do not (and I happen to be in this latter category.) By what scientific method do we decide that scientific method is the only form of knowledge? None. In this sense logic is not necessarily logical. It is arbitrary.

And as for religion itself, it turns out that it’s a pretty much a pick and mix affair- even for Catholics. They just ignore the bits they don’t like or are palpable nonsense. Let’s take homosexuality as an example. Yesterday, YouGov published a poll on Catholic views on a variety of social issues. 41% of Catholics believe in equality between gay and straight relationships (with 11% believing homosexual relationships to be morally wrong.) In a British Social Attitudes survey in 2006, 46% of respondents disagreed that ‘homosexual relationships are always wrong’ (with 10% strongly agreeing.) It would seems that the attitudes towards homosexuality are pretty similar between Catholics and non-catholics (though admittedly I’ve drawn some inference there as the surveys ask different questions.)

What I find worrying is the long battle there still is to firmly establish gay equality. But to single out religious believe as a root cause of this misses the point. Catholics are attacked for being out of step with society when, in fact, the evidence is that they are in step.

So we’ve had the philosophical attack on religion and the liberal attack. There are many liberals who are also social democrats. And this is the most preposterous of all attack perspectives. Social catholicism and dissenting religion are two of the foundation stones of social democracy in Europe- and the defeat of communism. In the UK, it was the theology and activism of Cardinal Manning in accordance with the teaching of Pope Leo XIII that brought Labour and religion together. The reason is quite simple. There is deep-seated imperative to alleviate suffering and distress that lies at the heart of Christ’s teachings. And same is true of labourism.

Social democracy and social faith were twins who were raised together. That’s just the history. Do modern social democrats think that warm feelings of altruism are enough to build a more equal society? The point about religion, trade unionism, cooperatism and the Labour is that they are institutions designed to replace division with unity and solidarity. It is the institutions that make it happen and, more importantly, it was the institutions that did make it happen. Perhaps this blindness to history comes from a historical focus of only a metre in front and behind us as typified by Polly Toynbee when she writes: “this here and now is all there is.” Believe this and you misunderstand the nature of social democracy and it dies. How perverse.

Goodness this world is brutal, chaotic and disconcerting enough without removing one of the institutions- faith- that can give some order, meaning and hope in face of acute distress. Let humanists build institutions of their own that provide meaning and solace in a world of loss and disappointment. Let them change society. It is a better way of expending time and intellectual energy than destroying those beliefs and institutions that have already proved capable of building a better and more united society.

As for the Vatican, it is out of touch, negligent (criminally so) and wrong. If the (illiberal) secular left wants to use that as a stick to beat up those who believe then that is a grave mistake. In the US it was the lunatic evangelical right who provoked and initiated a deeply damaging and divisive cultural war. We should hope that in the UK that fate can be avoided. If we do go down that route then, unfortunately, it will be an intolerant mutation of liberalism to blame. Put down your weapons before it’s too late.