Tag Archives: Islam

The march of Christian Nationalism (reflections on a strange day in Morecambe)

Posted on by symonhill

There is both good news and bad from the ‘Make Great Britain Christian Again’ conference that took place at Emmanuel Church in Morecambe this weekend.

On Saturday I joined with other concerned people to pray and witness outside this far-right event, which misused the name of Christ to peddle racist and fascist doctrines.

The bad news of course is that this far-right event went ahead at all. The Free Church of England – who insist that they own the building despite Emmanuel Church’s members splitting from them – tried to declare it cancelled. But the organisers pushed on.

Standing outside the building the far-right nature of the conference became ever clearer as time went on.

Several of the main speakers have a demonstrable history of stirring up racism  and bigotry (I can go into detail if requested!). Some of the conference attenders who engaged with us began by sounding reasonable before expressing views that were racist, authoritarian or both. Black and white people, according to one of the attenders who spoke with me, have biological differences based on “different sorts of blood”, which can cause medical problems if it is mixed. Others repeated widely discredited claims about the percentage of rapes in the UK that are committed by Muslims or migrants.

When asked to provide evidence for their claims, there were several cases of people looking vaguely at their phones and saying, “I can’t quite find it now…”.

While lots of people mentioned God, and often the Bible, there were far fewer reference to Jesus and almost none to the teachings of Jesus.

One of my most bizarre conversations was with James Renton, a student minister at Emmanuel Church. James wants to expel all Muslims from the UK. When I asked about a white British friend of mine who has become a Muslim, James said it was “especially” important to deport him because he is “a traitor to his country”.

The friend in question is one of the most compassionate and loving people I know, contributing more to society than most people I have ever met.

Unlike the man who thought he had white blood, James was keen to say that he was concerned with religion, not race. This did not really hold up when he kept talking about protecting “the indigenous people of Britain”, saying “we have been here 1500 years”.

As news emerged of the views expressed inside the conference, it became clear that some of that was even more bigoted than what we heard outside. I will write more about then when I have had more chance to watch the videos of the conference talks.

But I have good news too!

I was pleased that quite a number of the attenders were willing to engage with us. I am not naive about this: some conversations were more worthwhile than others. But there were some genuine – if difficult – conversations. It was clear that not everyone attending the conference realised how extreme some of the speakers were. A few said that they did not believe in everything being taught there – “I don’t listen to the anti-gay stuff”, as one of them put it.

I hope our conversations may have made an impact on these people, however slight.

The other good news is that resistance to Christian Nationalism is clearly growing as it becomes more visible. There were quite a lot more people praying or protesting outside the conference than I had expected. Several were members of the Better Story network, some were local to Morecambe while others had travelled a long way – one person came from as far as Brighton to witness against Christian Nationalism. At the beginning of the day, there were also local members of Stand Up To Racism, a group that includes people of several faiths and none.

We cannot keep ignoring the far-right and hope they will go away. It is staggering that there are still people advocating this approach, despite the far-right advancing rapidly in the UK just in the last few years. Hearing churchgoing Christians spewing far-right myths this weekend, I was struck by just how much these ideas are infecting Christian churches.

We need to go further than those church leaders who speak vaguely about concern. We need to challenge this far-right distortion of the gospel very clearly, while praying that God will guide us in loving our enemies and seeking forgiveness for all, including ourselves.

To make a real difference, we need to be prepared to say that the problems that are wrongly blamed on migrants and Muslims – poverty, homelessness, unemployment – are caused by the sinful structures we have established and our failure to build society in ways that can meet everyone’s needs rather than prioritising the interests of a wealthy and privileged few.

The Christian Nationalist organisers seem to have regarded their conference as a success. They sold out their tickets and they are planning a three-day conference next year. They seem to themselves as the beginning of a new movement. One of the most extreme speakers, Dominic Muir, predicted “a bold company of men, a restoration of masculine Christianity”.

These far-right distorters of the Gospel think that their time has come. They are on the march. We cannot sit back and ignore them. We need to be bold, and proclaim the truth of God’s inclusive and transforming love. _________________________________________________________________________________________________________

My book, The Upside-Down Bible: What Jesus really said about money, sex and violence (Darton, Longman and Todd, 2015) can be bought in paperback or e-book, priced £9.99.

Reform’s Makerfield candidate is bearing false witness about “Christian heritage”

Posted on by symonhill

The Reform party’s candidate in the Makerfield by-election is misleading voters to whip up anti-Muslim feelings. He is misleading voters while claiming to defend Christianity.

Robert Kenyon, who is hoping to beat Labour’s Andy Burnham on 18th June, posted a picture of himself on social media on Thursday (29th May) outside a building in the constituency. Alongside the image, he wrote:

“St Mary’s Church in Ince once served the people of Makerfield. Now it’s a mosque.

“Our Christian heritage is being erased. Reform UK will ban the conversion of churches and protect Britain’s traditions.”

At best, Kenyon has failed to check basic facts about an important issue before commenting on it publicly. At worst, he has wilfully misled voters.

Some fairly basic research reveals that the building in question stopped being used by St Mary’s Church some years ago.

It is not and never has been a mosque. It is a building for the community that hosts a food bank and includes a prayer room used by Muslims. The food bank is open to local people of all faiths and none.

The Reform party – and other far-right groups – have recently been whipping up fears of churches being turned into mosques. The number of occasions on which this has happened in reality are tiny.

Yet by pushing the “churches-into-mosques” narrative, the far-right are fuelling the narrative that Islam is threatening and replacing Christianity. This of course is a thinly veiled way of suggesting that people of colour are a threat to white people.

Perhaps the nastiest part of Kenyon’s tweet is the framing of the first sentence:

“St Mary’s Church in Ince once served the people of Makerfield. Now it’s a mosque.”

St Mary’s Church used to serve the people of Makerfield says Kenyon. He then says, “Now it’s a mosque”.

Thus being a mosque is presented not simply as the opposite of being a church but as the opposite of serving the community.

This is nonsense. Many mosques, like many churches, serve their local communities, including people of other faiths and no faith. Of course, there are other mosques and churches that do less for their communities. But it is utter nonsense to claim that a church will serve the community but a mosque won’t.

As a Christian, I am disgusted by Reform UK’s misuse of Christianity. I know that many other Christians do too, although church leaders are often far too slow to speak out against the way that Reform UK – and others – are speaking about such things.

Reform UK and much of the rest of the far-right seem to think that Christianity is a synonym for Britishness, or at least white Britishness, and a very narrow form of white Britishness at that.

It is not. Following Jesus is at odds with Reform UK’s vicious hostility to refugees, their candidates’ refusal to repent of the harm they have caused, the demonisation of minorities and Kenyon’s vicious misogyny.

Being a Christian is not about standing in front of a community building that includes a Muslim prayer room and telling lies about it.  

Christians must stand up for Muslims’ right to pray in public

Posted on by symonhill

For the first time that I can remember in my lifetime, there are MPs calling for an end to freedom of religion in the UK.

Nick Timothy, little-known Tory front-bencher and Shadow Justice Secretary, last week attacked an entirely peaceful public iftar that had taken place in London’s Trafalgar Square. This Muslim event, which involves sharing food and includes prayer, was open to people of all faiths and none.

It was the sixth time it had happened, but perhaps Timothy had only just noticed it. The more likely explanation is that racist dog-whistling has become more politically acceptable than it was five years ago.

Writing in the Daily Telegraph on Thursday, he attacked “the domination of public spaces”. Apparently with no sense of irony, he described this peaceful event that was open to all as an “act of domination and division”.

Nigel Farage – perhaps alarmed that far-right hatemongering was going on without him getting any headlines out of it – quickly joined in. In his usual style, he went further, and called for Muslim public prayer to be banned.

I cannot recall a previous case of a party leader (at least not the leader of a party mainstream enough to be in Parliament) calling for members of a particular religion not to be allowed to worship as a group in public.

Tory leader Kemi Badenoch has shamefully backed Nick Timothy, although they seem a bit vague about Farage’s “ban” call.

To their credit, some other Tory MPs have disassociated themselves from Timothy’s vile remarks, most notably Emma Best, the Tories’ deputy leader on the London Assembly. All the centrist and left-wing parties have thankfully condemned Timothy and Farage’s comments.

The controversy exposes the hypocrisy of right-wingers who like to condemn what they call “cancel culture” and who claim to be proud of Britain. Surely one of the greatest reasons to be proud of Britain is British traditions of freedom of religion and civil liberties. We have these rights because our ancestors struggled for them, often in the teeth of opposition from monarchs, militaries and – at times – religious leaders.

I am pleased to have seen a number of people of other faiths stand up for the right of Muslims to practise their religion.

 As a Christian, I am glad to see Christians challenging Farage and Timothy and speaking up for religious liberty. At the same time, however, I am disappointed. Christians as a whole, particularly Christian leaders, need to be far more vocal in showing solidarity with our Muslim neighbours.

As Christians we need have no fear of religious liberty. The Gospel of Christ advances by love and compassion, not by coercion and proscription. Many other religions such as Islam and Judaism share our trust in the God of love, even while we disagree about important matters such as the divinity of Jesus.

It is not other religions that pose the biggest threat to Christian faith. It is the destructive idols that we have created. These are the idols of money and markets and military might – and the idols of nationalism and sectarianism.

Most of the people who struggled for religious freedom in British history were themselves Christian history. As a Baptist I am proud that Baptists have always rejected state control of religion.

The first book calling for freedom of religion of Muslims and Jews in England was written in 1612 by Thomas Helwys, one of the first British Baptists. Helwys declared that, “The king is a mortal man, and not God, therefore he hath no power over the mortal soul of his subjects to make laws and ordinances for them and to set spiritual Lords over them”.

Calling for religious liberty was outrageously radical when Helwys wrote those words. In the 21st century, I would have thought that rejecting religious liberty would been far outside acceptable political debate. But far-right rhetoric has now become so mainstream that this is no longer the case.

Christians in general and church leaders in particular must speak up in support of Muslims who are under attack for peacefully praying. This is partly a matter of loving our neighbours as ourselves. It is partly a working out of Jesus’ teachings about breaking down barriers and recognising that those who are different to us are indeed our neighbours.

It is also a matter of self-interest. Every time that someone’s rights are suppressed, the restriction of the rights of others becomes more likely.

As the Jewish News put it on Thursday, “If you think that could not happen here, you are kidding yourselves. Uphold religious rights for all – you’ll never know when you’ll be glad that you did.”

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There will be a Christian bloc at the Together march on Saturday 28th March 2026 in central London. The march unites people of all faiths and none, including trades unions, migrant groups and community organisations, in challenging the far-right. Join us!

Ant Middleton wants a leader with ‘Christian values’- but Christian values are the opposite of his far-right nationalism

Posted on by symonhill

I recently wrote an article for Premier Christianity in response to Ant Middleton’s claim that he wants to defend “Christian values” as a candidate for Mayor of London. They published it in on 18th August. Below is a slightly extended version of the article.

As followers of Jesus, we are taught to be “wise as serpents and innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16).

I am alarmed therefore by how many Christians are cheering politicians who promise to protect “Christian values”. We should not be so naïve as to welcome such comments without asking what is meant by them.

Celebrity and ex-SAS soldier Ant Middleton recently posted on X: “Our Capital City of our Christian country needs to be run by a native Brit with generational Christian values, principles and morals coursing through their veins”.

But what does he mean by “generational Christian values”? Following Jesus is not hereditary. It is a personal choice, albeit with major implications for society. Middleton also argued that only people born in the UK, and whose parents and grandparents were born in the UK, should hold “top tier government positions”. He may have overlooked the fact that this would rule out several former prime ministers, including Winston Churchill.

To attack a political opponent on grounds of ethnicity is to undermine the Christian values that Middleton claims to defend

Middleton made the above remarks amid an announcement that he planned to stand in the 2028 London mayoral elections. He was initially tipped to be the Reform UK candidate, but recently announced that he would stand as an independent to defend “British culture”. In his post, Middleton took aim at current Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan. Whatever we might think about Khan’s policies, the birthplace of his parents should be irrelevant.

Breaking down the divide

I cannot see into Middleton’s heart or question the sincerity of his faith. Only God sees into his heart, just as only God sees into my heart or yours. I can, however, say that his comments seem utterly incompatible with Jesus’ teachings.

Jesus broke down hostility between Jews and Samaritans, and Jews and Gentiles. The New Testament is full of challenges to ethnic and social divisions so that “there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all” (Colossians 3:11). To attack a political opponent on grounds of ethnicity is to undermine the Christian values that Middleton claims to want to defend.

We should note that many who use the rhetoric of “Christian values” also talk of defending “British values”. Many also tend to be strongly nationalistic and anti-migrant. In the 2015 UKIP manifesto, Nigel Farage MP, now leader of Reform UK, said Britain needed “a much more muscular defence of our Christian heritage and our Christian Constitution”.

Independent MP Rupert Lowe recently launched a new political movement, Restore Britain. On X, he said it’s aim was to “slash immigration, protect British culture, restore Christian principles, carpet-bomb the cancer of wokery”.

Yet both men consistently use demeaning language when speaking about migrants and refugees and rely on highly questionable statistics. Farage recently claimed that Afghan men in the UK are 22 times more likely to be convicted of rape than British-born men. He did not, and could not, cite the slightest shred of evidence for this claim, which was later disproved by critical journalists. Despite this, it was repeated without evidence by his supporters on social media.

I do not expect all Christians to agree on all aspects of migration policy – or any other issue. Christian values cannot, however, be squared with demonising particular people groups, dismissing the needs of refugees or showing less concern for people of one nationality than those of another.

Scripture is full of commands such as: “The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God” (Leviticus 19:34).

A Christian Britain?

Nationalistic and anti-migrant parties mistake Christianity for Britishness – and for their very narrow notion of Britishness at that. If you visit parts of social media inhabited by these groups, you will find simplistic equations between being British, being white and being Christian. The reality that a large percentage of British Christians are not white seems to pass them by.

The central role of Christianity in British history is difficult to overstate. While Jesus’ teachings have at times inspired people with power in Britain, they have on many more occasions inspired people to resist the powerful.

Following Jesus is not hereditary. It is a personal choice

Jesus’ teachings inspired anti-slavery activists. In the 17th century, they inspired people to stand up for religious liberty against the monarchy, leading to the emergence of Baptists, Congregationalists, Quakers and other Christian movements we still recognise today.

Christian faith has been central to peace workers and war resisters in Britain and around the world, including people working for justice and reconciliation in Northern Ireland.

The nationalistic and authoritarian attitudes of Middleton, Farage and Lowe have little in common with these people’s values. They are more comparable to the values of the rulers and powerful bodies who many of them campaigned against.

Christian values continue to inspire British people to take action. “I believe Jesus actually meant what he said and he modelled nonviolent resistance to oppressive power,” said Baptist Pastor Sally Mann, who was arrested in London on 9th August. Sally had peacefully declared support for Palestine Action, a group banned under the Terrorism Act despite destroying weapons rather than using them.

On the same day, Rev Robin Hanford, a Unitarian Chrisitan minister, was assaulted by far-right demonstrators in Nuneaton for supporting refugees. They tried to pull off his clerical collar and accused him of being a “traitor to his religion”. But it is Robin’s views and not theirs that are consistent with Jesus’ approach to nationality.

“Not everyone who says to me ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven,” said Jesus (Matthew 7:21). The nationalistic politicians and candidates who want to preserve Britian’s “Christian values” seem less keen to pay attention to Jesus’ words.

I pray that God will give us courage to follow Jesus’ example of standing with the marginalised and pulling down barriers, rather than falling for the claims of those who misuse Christian language to attack people different to themselves.

Reform UK’s MPs are ready to justify violence – whether it’s carried out by the police or used against them

Posted on by symonhill

It has not taken long for the five MPs from Reform UK to reveal themselves as a gang of far-right thugs in suits.

Nigel Farage has spent much of the last two days denying that he stoked up the racist violence in Southport on Tuesday. The reality is that Farage recorded a video only hours before the violence began in which he challenged the police’s statement that the murders of children were “not terror-related”.

Farage told his viewers:

“I just wonder whether the truth is being withheld from us. I don’t know the answer to that.”

Farage is right about one thing: he does not know the answer to that. He knows no more about this horrendous attack than most of us do – which is very little. He also knows that despite saying he does not, know, his comments were likely to be heard as strongly implying that the truth is indeed being withheld from us.

Yesterday, he defended himself on GB News, claiming that the police should have been clearer about the identity of the murderer. Disgracefully, Farage claimed:

“That’s what led to the riots last night. That’s what led to people being outside that mosque in Southport. You know, sometimes just tell the public the truth and you might actually stop riots from happening.”

If Farage is implying that people would not have attacked a mosque if they had known the murderer was not a Muslim, then he is in effect suggesting that it would have been acceptable to attack a mosque if the killer were a Muslim.

Reform UK leader’s reluctance to believe police statements contrasts remarkably with Reform UK’s attitude when a police officer was filmed jumping on a suspect’s head as he lay prone on the floor in Manchester airport last week.

Reform MPs rushed to defend the police involved, saying that police officers had been viciously attacked, including by the person whose head one of them later jumped on.

They missed the point that nobody was defending violent assaults on police officers. But Reform MPs defended equivalently vile behaviour – because it was done by police officers. There is no context in which it is acceptable to kick and jump on someone who is lying prone on the floor, whatever that person has done.

Tice went so far as to post a photo of a young police officer with blood on her face, claiming she had been attacked by the men in Manchester Airport. The picture turned out to have been taken in Leicestershire four years ago.

A week later, this demonstrably false photo is still on Tice’s Twitter feed.

Tice, however, must cede the award for most ludicrous response to his fellow Reform MP (and former Tory MP) Lee Anderson – the man known for telling refugees to “fuck off”, telling anti-monarchists to emigrate and telling people in poverty that it is possible to cook a meal for 30 pence.

Anderson didn’t just try to shift the focus away from police violence. He actively welcomed the violence. He wrote on Twitter:

“The vast majority of decent Brits would applaud this type of policing. We are sick of the namby pamby approach. Time to back our boys in blue.”

This is the first time I have known the phrase “namby pamby” used to mean “not jumping on people’s heads”. Anderson (as usual) cites no evidence that “the vast majority of decent Brits” are in favour of police assaulting suspects as they lie prone on the ground.

But Anderson surpassed even himself in his comments in a BBC interview, saying:

“The message I am getting loud and clear from my constituents is they are fed up with seeing police dancing around rainbows and being nice to people and running off from rioters. They want police to do their job, and I think these police yesterday should be commended. In fact, I’d give them a medal.”

You might need to read that again. The most shocking statement from Anderson is not that he wants to give a medal to people engaged in a violent assault. It is that the police behaviour to which he objects include “being nice to people”.

Yes, he really said that. He said his constituents are fed up with seeing police “being nice to people”.

What an outrageous way to behave – being nice to people. This is a party whose MPs defend people who engage violence against a man lying prone on the floor, but who object if those same individuals are being nice to people.

Reform’s enthusiasm for the police suddenly changed, however, when it came to the horrific murders of children in Southport on Monday.

With the Manchester airport incident, Tice, Anderson and their mates had taken it for granted that everything said about the suspects’ attacks on police was true. Now it may well be true, but it’s worth noting that they did not even stop to consider whether it was.

In contrast, the police statements that they do question are not those involving the disputed details of a violent incident but factual statements about an arrested individual.

The police in Southport said that the individual they have arrested is 17 and was born in Cardiff to parents from Rwanda. Today a court ordered that his name be made public. The police have said the incident is not “terror-related”, which I think is a bizarre expression but basically seems to mean that the motivation was not an attempt to bring about political change.

While I have little or no faith in the police, the police statements that seem to me to be most likely to be accurate are those concerning the age, nationality and so on of suspects.

This has not stopped far-right types claiming on social media that the killer is a Muslim and/or an asylum-seeker. But as he was born in Cardiff, he literally cannot be an asylum-seeker. A Rwandan family is pretty unlikely to be Muslim. Even if he were Muslim, this would not take away from the reality that Muslims in Southport are as appalled as anyone else by the horrific murders of children.

Farage’s language about the truth being withheld played directly into the hands of those who claimed that the basic factual statements about the arrested individual are not true. Reform MPs were too late to undo their damage when they took to social media on Wednesday morning to condemn the violence in Southport the previous night.

Within less than a month of Reform UK gaining five MPs, they have revealed the reality that they side with violent thugs – whether those thugs are attacking police officers, or are police officers themselves.

Sunak says democracy is under threat – but it’s people like him who are threatening it

Posted on by symonhill

Rishi Sunak thinks that democracy is under threat in the UK. I agree with him. The difference is that I think it’s under threat from people such as Rishi Sunak and he seems to think it’s under threat from people like me. 

In the last few years, successive UK governments have eroded fundamental civil liberties and human rights, imposing greater restrictions on peaceful protest than have been seen in Britain since the Second World War.

The police have been allowed to exceed even these powers with virtually no consequences. My personal experience of this reality came with my unlawful arrest by Thames Valley Police when I objected to the proclamation of Charles Windsor as king in September 2022. Many others have faced far worse consequences. 

But now, Sunak and his allies in the right-wing media want to restrict the right to protest even further. They are justifying this assault on democracy by claiming that they are doing it to protect democracy. 

Sunak claims that there is a “growing consensus that mob rule is replacing democratic rule”.

I find it difficult to believe that such a claim could be taken seriously by many people at all, let alone that there is a “consensus” about it. Sunak’s assertion makes about as much sense as Suella Braverman’s fantasy statement that “the Islamists, the extremists and the anti-Semites are in charge now” (I’m pretty sure the Tories are still in charge, though of course some of them are indeed extremists and anti-Semites).

According to Sunak, the threat of mob rule comes from left-wing protests. In recent days, a number of ministers have attacked the overwhelmingly peaceful anti-war marches that have been regularly taking place against the Israeli forces’ murderous assaults on the people of Gaza. Home Secretary James Cleverley says that protests should stop because protesters have “made their point“. He has not suggested that Israeli forces could stop killing children because they have made their point. I would much rather not be spending time protesting against the slaughter of innocent people. The need to do so will end only when the slaughter ends. 

Parts of the media are whipping up talk of the fear and threats faced by MPs. I strongly oppose death threats to anyone. Having received quite a few of them myself over the years, I sympathise with MPs who receive a lot more and who genuinely fear for their safety. But banning protests will not make them any safer.

Six MPs have been killed in the UK in the last century – a much lower number than in some countries, but still outrageous.

The first four were killed by Irish Republicans. Of the most recent two, David Amess was killed by an Islamic fundamentalist and Jo Cox by a far-right white supremacist. Both these murders were horrific and any humane person rightly condemns them. Neither Cox nor Amess would have been saved by restricting rights to protest.

Some papers have focused on the very small number of protests that have taken place outside MPs’ homes. I agree that protesting at people’s homes is generally wrong – especially if there are children there, as they may be frightened and are not to blame for their parents’ actions. The reality is that demonstrations at politicians’ homes are relatively rare and usually small-scale.

I suspect that most of the commentators calling for a crackdown on protests know this. But talking them up diverts attention from the reality of peaceful and diverse groups of people who are marching every week against violence. 

We already have laws to deal with the vile instances of antisemitism that have increased since October. Such outrages are in no way representative of the anti-war marches that have brought together Muslims, Jews, Christians, atheists and many others to oppose the Israeli government’s military aggression. The vast majority of them also oppose Hamas’ aggression. 

The only major violent demonstration in central London in recent months was not an anti-war protest but was in effect a pro-war protest. Far-right activists fought with the police near the Cenotaph, which they claimed they had come to “protect” from people protesting against the war in Gaza on Armstice Day. Their fury had effectively been whipped up by the likes of Sunak, Braverman and Tom Tugendhat, who all must have known that in reality the anti-war march was going nowhere near the Cenotaph.

Democracy is not simply about walking into a polling station every five years and then shutting up until you’re allowed to vote again. Sunak apparently sees no irony in talking of democracy despite having been elected as Prime Minister only by the Conservative Party, and appointed to the post by a monarch elected by nobody at all. Under First-Past-the-Post, a winning party never receives more than half the votes, but is declared to have been elected democratically. 

Nonetheless, we are lucky to have more elements of democracy in the UK than can be found in much of the world. The democracy we have – however limited – is something to celebrate.

We have it not because the rich and powerful generously handed it down to us. The only reason we have any democracy at all is that our ancestors went out onto the streets and campaigned for it. Chartists, Levellers, women’s suffrage campaigners and others struggled and in some cases died for the elements of democracy that we now enjoy. It is not Sunak and the Daily Mail, but people marching against war in Gaza, who stand in the tradition of such people. 

In a country in which the super-rich have vastly disproportionate power, wealthy individuals such as Rishi Sunak are the last people likely to support taking democracy further. We can expect no help from them in working towards real democracy, in which we would have democratic control of local communities and democratic control of workplaces. 

Sunak’s government sells arms to Israel and Saudi Arabia and suppresses peaceful protest. Anti-war demonstrators are exercising their rights to resist war with active nonviolence. One side in this argument is anti-violence and pro-democracy. And Sunak is on the other side.