Kier Starmer Labour Prime Minister and the latest in a long line of non-religious UK PMs
An under-reported fact following the landslide victory for the Labour Party at the last election was the massively increased number of MPs in the Commons who have no religion. Roughly 40% of MPs chose to make a secular affirmation rather than swear a religious oath on taking their seats. This included Sir Kier Starmer and 50% of his cabinet ministers.
The list of openly non-religious Prime Ministers ever since the 1888 when the law requiring all MPs to take a religious oath was abolished, includes Ramsay McDonald, first Labour PM and former president of Humanists UK, David Lloyd George, Neville Chamberlain, Winston Churchill, Clement Atlee and James Callaghan. It is almost exactly 100 years since Ramsay McDonald became the first PM to make a secular affirmation in 1924.
According to Humanists UK:
AnalysisWhat is notable in the figures for MPs is how religion is increasingly the preserve of the right and far right in British politics. Reform UK is overtly racist, xenophobic and Islamophobic, while the centre-right Conservatives have just been booted out of office because people were fed up with their self-serving greed, sleaze, incompetence and downright dishonesty. The bulk of secular MPs are from the centre-left Labour, Liberal Democrat and Green MPs.
The 40% of affirming MPs includes 47% of Labour and 47% of Liberal Democrat MPs, as well as all four Green MPs, both SDLP MPs, and 6 of 9 SNP MPs (although as policy its MPs often affirm regardless of belief). By contrast, only 9% of Conservative MPs, one of five Reform UK MPs, chose to affirm. Neither did any of the DUP, Plaid Cymru, Alliance, or TUV MPs. The Sinn Fein MPs do not take part in the swearing-in due to refusal to swear allegiance to the UK.
Just under 6% of MPs gave oaths which indicated they belonged to Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, or Sikh religious traditions. This is broadly representative of society as a whole.
By contrast, just 24% of MPs affirmed following the 2019 general election. The figure was similar after the 2015 and 2017 general elections.
Although a small number of those affirming will have done so in spite of being religious or because their religion forbids taking oaths, the reverse is also true of those taking oaths. A large number of MPs typically swear on the Bible in spite of being non-religious, including some who have been public about the fact that they are not religious and don’t believe in any gods.
The 40% of MPs affirming comes close to the 42% of Britons who say they don’t believe in gods. But Parliament still appears to be more religious than the population as a whole. The British Social Attitudes Survey records 53% of people as belonging to no religion, versus 37% Christian and 9% of another religion. In 2018 it recorded that 42% of Brits don’t believe in a god, and 39% do.
The essence of being human, irrespective of who you are, where you come from, and what your circumstances, is dignity. It means all people have rights which cannot be taken away. The idea of irreducible human dignity became a sort of lode star which has guided me ever since; it gave me a method, a structure and framework by which I could test propositions. And it brought politics into law for me.
Sir Kier Starmer
Quoted in his biography by Tom Baldwin.
Quoted in his biography by Tom Baldwin.
In increasingly secular Britain, bringing religion into politics is a big no-no that calls judgement into question as overt religiosity is regarded as a form of insanity - the preserve of the disheveled character ranting on a street corner that people cross the street to avoid. No-one wants a 'religious nutter' running the country.
Britain has been moving steady away from religion since WWII, with non-religious now vying with Christianity. The 2021 census showed those self-identifying as Christian fell 13 percentage points to under 50% (46.2%) from 2011 while 'No religion' increased 12 percentage point to 37.2%. Other religious groups all returned single-figure percentage points with some remaining below 1%. In 2001, those self-identifying as Christian stood at 71.7%. Christianity has been declining at the rate of almost 1.3% per annum during the 21st century and regular church attendance is now well below 10%.
Other points of note from the 2021 census were:
- The religion question is voluntary; 94.0% (56.0 million) of usual residents answered the question in 2021, an increase from 92.9% (52.1 million) in 2011.
- For the first time in a census of England and Wales, less than half of the population (46.2%, 27.5 million people) described themselves as “Christian”, a 13.1 percentage point decrease from 59.3% (33.3 million) in 2011; despite this decrease, “Christian” remained the most common response to the religion question.
- “No religion” was the second most common response, increasing by 12.0 percentage points to 37.2% (22.2 million) from 25.2% (14.1 million) in 2011.
- There were increases in the number of people who described themselves as “Muslim” (3.9 million, 6.5% in 2021, up from 2.7 million, 4.9% in 2011) and “Hindu” (1.0 million, 1.7% in 2021, up from 818,000, 1.5% in 2011).
- Wales had a greater decrease in people reporting their religion as “Christian” (14.0 percentage point decrease, from 57.6% in 2011 to 43.6% in 2021) and increase in “No religion” (14.5 percentage point increase, from 32.1% in 2011 to 46.5% in 2021) compared with England and Wales overall.
- London remains the most religiously diverse region of England in 2021, with over a quarter (25.3%) of all usual residents reporting a religion other than “Christian”; the North East and South West are the least religiously diverse regions, with 4.2% and 3.2%, respectively, selecting a religion other than “Christian”.
A 2021 British Social Attitudes survey, which asks slightly different questions concerning religion, returned a figure of 53% non-religious with 37% Christian (Anglican or Catholic) and 9% other religions:
Ten Reasons To Lose Faith: And Why You Are Better Off Without It
This book explains why faith is a fallacy and serves no useful purpose other than providing an excuse for pretending to know things that are unknown. It also explains how losing faith liberates former sufferers from fear, delusion and the control of others, freeing them to see the world in a different light, to recognise the injustices that religions cause and to accept people for who they are, not which group they happened to be born in. A society based on atheist, Humanist principles would be a less divided, more inclusive, more peaceful society and one more appreciative of the one opportunity that life gives us to enjoy and wonder at the world we live in.
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