Just what Nigel Farage needed fresh from his by-election battle with Count Binface: now he’s got a former Archbishop of Canterbury on his case. Rowan Williams, whose headgear in the job was only marginally less striking than the intergalactic candidate for Clacton, has accused the Reform UK leader of using Christianity to stir up anti-Muslim feeling.
In an interview with the New Humanist magazine, Williams said: “I suspect really that Farage and others want to channel anti-Muslim feeling, and it helps to have ‘we’re a Christian society’ to fling back. It gives a sort of ballast.” He also took aim at Tommy Robinson, the far-right activist whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon and who has recently professed Christian faith. Williams said he would “really want to ask [Robinson] some awkward questions” about “how attempting to lead a life of Christian discipleship squares with public rhetoric designed to produce hostility and violence”.
Yet, Farage and Robinson aren’t the same people or indeed even the same problem. Farage loathes Robinson, for one thing, and sees his own political movement as the pressure release valve that stops the hard right from taking a hold in the UK in the way it has managed in other countries. Of course, not everyone will agree with this argument: presumably Williams thinks that Farage is part of a slippery slope towards Robinson’s politics. He clearly thinks both are misusing Christianity.
