Faith, politics, philosophy, Prue Leith & Canada’s conveyor belt of death

Danny Kruger MP is the Member of Parliament for Devizes and an evangelical Christian.

He has previously worked in journalism and in politics, having worked as a speechwriter for David Cameron, and as Political Secretary to Boris Johnson when he was Prime Minister. In 2006 he and his wife Emma founded Only Connect, a project working in prisons to stop criminals re-offending.

Danny chairs the All Party Parliamentary Group for Dying Well, which promotes access to excellent care at the end of life and stands against the legalisation of assisted suicide. Danny and his mother, TV chef and national treasure Prue Leith, recently made a documentary for Channel 4 which saw them head off on a road trip to America and Canada together, exploring the issues around assisted dying from their contrasting viewpoints. Prue has been campaigning for the practice of assisted dying to be introduced to the UK for 12 years.

en: You’re not from a Christian family, and you came to faith reading C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity – how did that happen?

DK: That happened because I had a friend who got me reading it. I mean, it’s a much longer story than that, but after years of vague interest through my teens and 20s I decided to properly look at Christianity under the influence of my friend, Emma, who is now my wife. And here we are!

en: And then Emma took you on a church tour – how did how did you find that?

DK: I was completely astonished to discover the wealth of Christianity in London. I had been entirely ignorant of the extent to which huge numbers of people are at church every week, in all sorts of different churches.

It was an extraordinary eye-opener and incredibly encouraging. Unsurprisingly now – but to my surprise at the time – I found that the more orthodox, the more faithful and authentic the doctrine a church offered, the more successful that church was. My experience of middle-of-the-road, vaguely liberal, Anglican churches, had been around weddings and christenings and Christmas and Easter. My previous impression of the church was totally upended by discovering these Pentecostal, evangelical, charismatic churches of all different types.

en: You’d always been a philosophical and deep thinker, doing your DPhil on Burke. What did you find most exciting about finding that other world of churches, and finding faith?

DK: I think I was ready for faith, not just because I had a psychological and spiritual need for it, but because intellectually I was already dissatisfied with the liberal offer. And with the sense that all of our flourishing and well-being derives from essentially material allocation of goods and even of relationships that are essentially self-serving. I thought there was something wrong with a culture that treats the individual as essentially a consumer of goods and other people. Philosophically I was ready, and I was very disposed to a more communitarian politics anyway, through Burke and other conservative writers. I realised that in almost all cases the writers and thinkers that I admired the most were Christians, and I thought they might be on to something!

en: What do you see as the difference between the Christianity of the past and the church today?

DK: I see in the church a valiant effort, as in every generation, to remain relevant while also remaining faithful. And that’s always going to be difficult. What I worry most about is – and I don’t know where this phrase comes from, but it’s always with me – the temptation of the church to blow out the candles to see better in the dark. I always think it’s so right. I think that the churches which are full and the ones that have the most to offer are the ones who are standing against the culture while also serving society. I don’t think I can say authentically that the church in the past was better, because it would have been guilty of all the sins of its time, just as we are guilty of the sins of our time. But I think there are huge reasons for hope at the moment in the wider church, even though the Church of England is obviously in quite a difficult spot.

en: Tell me about how those threads of politics, service and faith have run together in your life?

DK: Since before I was a Christian, I was quite into what you call service, and I liked the adventure of helping people and going into different situations on a purely personal level. I have always been interested in social change and going to where the trouble is, basically! I used to organise aid convoys to the former Yugoslavia, during the civil war in the 1990s, when I was still a student … I founded Only Connect with Emma, doing prisons work, after I became a Christian. When I got together with Emma she was working at the BBC, but in prisons, then she wanted to set up her own project after the BBC work finished. So I helped her set it up thinking it would look after itself, more or less, but it became more and more my own life as well as hers. Then we married and I went to work full time with it.

I guess that it all kind of came together because I felt that while I was working in politics and we were doing a lot of talking about the big society and social responsibility and civil society and so on, and really believing in that, I was actually doing quite a lot of it in my spare time. But fundamentally, my job was here [Parliament] writing speeches about the NHS, or Europe, or hug a hoodie, or whatever. That last one at least was on topic, and so I felt quite inspired to go full time doing it. And Only Connect, our prisons work, was working with Emma. We’d just got married – it felt like an adventure. My parents worked together all their lives, and I liked the thought of working with Emma – that too felt like an adventure.

en: You’ve commented in the press about feeling aware of disadvantage as a Christian, in our current culture of liberal individualism. How do you think you’ve experienced that disadvantage as a Christian here in Parliament?

DK: On a personal level, Parliament is very supportive of people of all faiths – there are a lot of Christians in Parliament, and the whole place is absolutely soaked in it. Although it is very formulaic, with the prayers at the beginning of the day, and a chaplain and all that, I think that that is all very important. But more importantly, there are a lot of Christians here. This is no surprise - wherever there is social action or service of any sort going on, you’re going to get a lot of Christians, as well as people of other faiths. So it’s not difficult to be a Christian in Parliament. What is hard is to win an argument as a Christian, because people very quickly choose to disregard your arguments, even if there’s no mention of God in them: they think that you’re just coming at this from a Christian perspective and all your arguments are just a sort of fig leaf for your real desire, which is somehow different from what you say it is. Polly Toynbee made that point to me when I was on TV with her a few months ago, talking about assisted dying. She said I should sort of come clean at the beginning of the conversation that I’m a Christian.

en: Is that hugely frustrating?

DK: It is frustrating, but it’s mostly absurd. I hope the public realise how absurd it is to suggest that you need to sort of proclaim your religious position on everything before you start speaking about it.

I always respond by saying, well, Polly, or whoever, you’re bringing your religion to work as well. And everybody has a set of values that they apply to their politics. And fundamentally, on assisted dying I think we’re up against an alternative religious view, as we are in all of these kind of life questions, moral questions.

There’s an alternative religion that is now more or less established in the culture, if not formally established yet – although we’re getting there – which holds that the only God is me, and my autonomy is the fundamental moral principle. So we’re up against that. I don’t think it’s right to complain as a Christian about being suspected or distrusted, because that’s what Christians have always had. We’ve always been against saying yes to culture. We should be very generous to each other. We’re not really in a civil war, because they’re getting their ideas from us too. Ultimately, we’re all rooted in the Christian tradition, even if they don’t realise it.

en: Kate Forbes MSP is not having an easy time at present – do you think it’s particularly challenging for party leaders to have a personal faith?

DK: Having said that it’s easy to be a Christian in Parliament, I don’t think it’s very easy to be a party leader, or to be a Christian party leader. Because, while there’s tolerance of eccentricity among the troops, the leader I think is expected more or less to adhere fairly closely to the dominant religion, the established religion. And established religion is what it is. That said, these things change.

I think Tim Farron would admit that he didn’t handle his encounter brilliantly at the time. For Kate, I think it is a different moment, different person. I do think Tim is actually a hero. His issue has always been that he’s too nice. This is an enormous asset – to be such a decent guy is really such a witness. I don’t want to knock what he’s done, but it was self-defeating in terms of his position, even if he saved his soul.

Harry Phibbs is a journalist who recently tweeted about Kate Forbes. A journalist says ‘Kate Forbes, would you like to sell your birthright for a mess of pottage?’, Kate replies ‘No thanks’, the pundit says ‘Oh, what an error, she’s missed out on a mess of pottage you know, what a political blunder’ and yet I think she could get the mess of pottage. It would be amazing.

en: What do you see is the difference between Christian values supporting conservatism and other faith values in conservatism, given particularly the faith of the current prime minister?

DK: I think faith in general is a very good partner for conservatism. Faith generally works very well in politics. The left have just as good a claim to be in the Christian tradition; and, as we know, Muslims and Hindus can be leftist too. I do think there is something particularly appropriate for conservatives to think about in the Judeo Christian tradition, because we believe in the particular institutional history of our country. But we see people of all faiths resonate very well with arguments around family, around community responsibility, around patriotism, and around serving one’s ancestors as well as one’s posterity. It feels very appropriate that we have people from all faiths in conservatism. I think what Rishi represents, in everything that he seems to stand for and what his family stands for, is conservative principles, with very strong links to the family, a very strong belief in enterprise and self reliance.

en: Tell me about your recent TV show with your mum, Prue Leith – what was it like making a programme about something so important with someone you love so much, but who doesn’t share your faith or your viewpoints?

DK: My mum and I have always argued in a very friendly way, forever. Doing that on camera wasn’t difficult. And it was helpful to actually be forced, rather than doing it in a casual way as you do just talking at home. On TV you’re on record, and you have to organise your arguments well, so it was a helpful exercise. On a personal level, we both really quite enjoyed it. It was nice as we were spending time together, with the film crew, but I think we both came away with an enhanced respect for the other person’s perspective. I have great respect for my mum as a campaigner. She doesn’t have to do this work. I don’t think we have to have terribly divisive relations over questions like this. We’re all basically believing the same thing. She says people should die well. We just disagree about where the risk falls. That doesn’t feel to me like you need to fall out over it.

en: What was the highlight of making the show for you?

DK: The most convincing bits for me were in Toronto, with the doctors who work with the vulnerable, marginalised communities in Canada. These aren’t the poster children for the movement. Not like the people you see on adverts. Literally, the advertisers and the ones who get into the documentaries are, without fail, all prosperous, capable, less vulnerable people. It’s the vulnerable, disabled, mentally ill, the marginalised who don’t get on the posters for this thing. And they’re the ones who are dying in their thousands, because they’re being put on this conveyor belt. You don’t meet them because they’re dead, and they’re not going to talk in advance. We don’t have the sob stories in the way the other side do – these powerful cases which have masses of sympathy.

en: Yet the stats here are shocking, and the potential shift by MAID in Canada (medical assistance in dying programme) to mental health?

DK: And they’re also proposing it for children now. There was a parliamentary report last week where they are now recommending mature minors, as they call them, for MAID – which is teenagers. Given that the law allows people who are just refusing medical treatment to be eligible, some are going to die because they’re starving themselves to death, like diabetics or anorexics. So a teenager who wants to die will be able to simply say, I’m withholding treatment, I’m refusing to eat. And among the tens of thousands of doctors in Canada, they’ll find two doctors who will sign them off, who believe in the autonomy of the individual. And this is why I feel it’s a religion, because people whom you would have thought to be concerned for the vulnerable – particularly if they are on the left – concerned for the marginalised, the disabled, the victims of an unfair world, whom you would have thought their politics would make them care the most, don’t seem to. When there’s also an argument around personal autonomy, then personal autonomy comes first. You can be dead within two days in Canada because it can all happen so fast, even before your family know you’re even interested or thinking about medical assisted dying, you’re dead.

en: That’s really shocking. You chair the All Party Parliamentary Group on Dying Well, where your most recent APPG meeting was on the MAID in Canada?

DK: Yes. That’s right. Exactly. That was a few weeks ago – you can find out more about it online at https://www.dyingwell.co.uk/

en: In your 2020 Levelling Up Report you talked about a new deal for faith communities. Tell me about how that continues in the manifesto of your New Social Covenant?

DK: The government has set up this new deal for churches, which is a rather trifling £10 million. But there are opportunities that come from that. I think that the role of faith groups generally in social policy and delivery is huge, it’s just not acknowledged and it’s not funded. The New Social Covenant Unit that Miriam Cates and I have established aims to develop proposals to strengthen families, communities and the nation, building on the report I wrote for the Prime Minister in 2020. We think different people will have different ideas of how to make this happen, and that differences and disagreements can be fruitful. We need to recognise much more the role that faith groups can play in a whole range of pretty challenging social questions. I think we could do a lot more on that here in government.

en: What can readers of Evangelicals Now be praying for you and your work?

DK: Thank you. I think for courage and wisdom as ever. And for soft hearts on all sides. That’s what we need. Softer hearts. I think particularly on the other side of these arguments, but on our side too.

en: … and what can they be doing to support the work that you’re doing, particularly around dying well?

DK: Thank you. Well, the campaign urgently needs funding because we want to do polling and public advertising. And we’re up against an incredibly well-funded, hugely celebrity-backed campaign, which is spending millions of dollars a year on this as a global campaign – millions and millions. They have a network all around the UK. And they’re very well resourced. So we always need money to fund the work. And we need voices – we need people to be writing to their MPs, we especially need doctors to be stepping forward to do this. And we need people who work in all roles in end-of-life care to be coming forward. It’s worrying that the British Medical Association have now gone neutral on this issue. They have only done so by a few votes and maybe we’ll be able to reverse it. But you can see the power of the well-funded lobbying operation for the other side.

en: Finally, as a former speech writer, what is your biggest tip to any of our readers wanting to write memorable sermons?

DK: I think, always remember what you want the headline to be. Hug a Hoodie in 2006 wasn’t supposed to be the headline – it was meant to be Tough on Crime, but that wasn’t how it turned out!

en endeavours to interview a range of evangelical MPs from a variety of political parties and no individual interview represents any party political endorsement.