'He's not the Messiah...'

A couple of weeks ago, my wife and I sat down to watch Monty Python’s ‘Life of Brian’ for the first time. The film - which was highly controversial in Christian circles upon its release - follows the life of an unfortunate Jewish peasant called Brian, who the Jerusalem crowds hail as a Messianic figure, who can defeat the Romans and sort out all their problems. This all occurs despite his own protestations, and those of his mother: ‘He’s not the Messiah, he’s a very naughty boy!’.

Of course, Messianic and revolutionary figures were common within ancient Israel; we actually hear about some of them indirectly within the New Testament. In Acts 5, when the apostles are brought before the Sanhedrin, the Pharisee Gamaliel, urging caution (to see whether Jesus’ movement is from God or not) reminds them of Theudas (“Some time ago Theudas appeared, claiming to be somebody, and about four hundred men rallied to him”) and Judas the Galilean, who led a revolt during the census.

The word ‘Messiah’ has its origins in the Hebrew word ‘mashiah’, meaning ‘anointed king’, a reference to the oil with which kings were anointed in the Old Testament. It came to be applied to the great Jewish hope for a coming King who would fulfil God’s promises and establish his reign of peace and justice. Within a Roman Empire which imposed puppet-kings and quashed any resistance, claiming to be a Messiah was a dangerous job. Either you were the real thing, or you’d end up dead, and your followers with you.

Perhaps the best-known failed Messiah is Simon Bar Kokhba, who styled himself as a ‘son of the star’ (his name and the Hebrew word for ‘star’ are similar), in fulfilment of the prophecy in Numbers 24:17 that says, ‘A star will out of Jacob, and a sceptre will rise out of Israel’. He initially had some success, establishing a temporary Jewish state for around three years, only for him, like Theudas and Judas the Galilean before him, to be killed by the Romans.

It is easy, particularly if we have long been waiting for an upturn in Britain’s fortunes, to hail a new leader as a Messiah. Indeed when Andy Burnham entered the House of Commons, an opposition MP actually heckled him across the benches with that famous line: “He’s not the Messiah”. Burnham, displaying an ease in communication his predecessor did not possess, duly completed the quote!

Politics is a tricky business. Generally you only gain power by talking down the previous government. If you say they’ve done a great job, then why should someone appoint you instead? Instead, you say that you hold the answer, you’re the person who ought to be in charge, and you (and only you) can fix the problems which the people before you couldn’t. And if you fail? Well, you’re clearly not the Messiah after all, and although your fall from grace will be less violent, it will still be pretty terminal. The days of Prime Ministers getting a second crack of the whip are long behind us.

Leaders make promises to get elected, and then find they can’t keep them. Their followers - encouraged by the media - portray them as saviours who can lead their party or the country out of the doldrums and into the sunny hinterlands above, as if they can merely click their fingers and bring about some utopia. The reality, of course, is very different. How many Prime Ministers ever end their careers on a high, rather than as a disappointment?

Some are brought down because of bad-decision making and poor judgement. Others fail due to moral failings. And regardless of either of those, some politicians simply find that they are not big enough to overturn the circumstances in which they find themselves.

It’s the first week back after the summer holidays, and politics is well and truly underway again.

On Tuesday, Keir Starmer, having stepped down as PM earlier in the summer, announced his resignation as MP for Holborn and St Pancras. He did so (presumably not accidentally) just hours before Andy Burnham addressed Parliament for the first time, sitting through three hours of questions.

Mr Burnham had been in office for almost two months, but having taken office during the summer, it has felt like a relatively soft-start for our new Prime Minister, who has been getting by so far on good vibes, rather than concrete policy announcements. The response of the bond markets to his new pronouncements was not favourable.

And then last night, Channel 4 News released a report which purports to show two of Nigel Farage’s most senior advisors, Dan Jukes (his chief of staff) and James Orr (Reform’s head of policy) attempting to circumvent electoral law to secure foreign donations for the party.

So that’s Prime Minister past, Prime Minister present, and (according to some pundits, anyway) a potential Prime Minister future, all in a single week!

When we’re talking at CARE about what we want to look for in a political leader, we sometimes refer to three ‘C’s: convictions, character and competence. Convictions matter: what does someone actually believe? Character is important too: can I trust this person with power? And so does competence: will they actually be able to deliver what they say they are going to?

If anything, our politics at the moment reveals how rare it is to be the complete package. We read in the Psalms, “Do not put your trust in princes, in human beings, who cannot save” (Psalm 146:3). How true…

Sometimes leaders just make the wrong judgement calls. When Keir Starmer became Prime Minister in July 2024, no one would have been expecting him to be forced to resign just two years later. His victory had been comprehensive, his majority seemed unassailable.

When Rishi Sunak called the General Election in the pouring rain outside Downing Street, the activist Steve Bray played through his loudspeaker the song, ‘Things can only get better’. What a difference a couple of years can make…

Keir Starmer’s premiership will not, I suspect, be remembered terribly kindly. Having claimed during the election that Labour wouldn’t put up taxes, within months Rachel Reeves was raising National Insurance. Although it was clear that the welfare bill was unsustainable and needed reforming, Starmer was unable to pass even modest changes through the Labour Parliamentary Party, under threat from a massive rebellion. He became known for one u-turn after another: Winter Fuel payments, PIP, the inquiry into grooming gangs, digital ID.

The nadir of it all was the appointment of Peter Mandelson as Ambassador to the USA, who was implicated in the Epstein affair. The Government declared that Mandelson had not been honest about his links with Epstein, even though it had been widely covered in the press. A Guardian investigation a few months later revealed he had been given the role despite him failing to pass vetting procedures, and that the Foreign Office had overruled security officials. Eventually it was revealed Mandelson had been sent confidential documents and security briefings even before the vetting process was finished.

At the end of his watch, the country was left more divided, the Labour party more ungovernable, and most of the problems he had inherited were unresolved.

Add an inability to communicate effectively, a lack of political instinct, and a general inability to connect with the public, and, with the exception of foreign policy, it is difficult to think of much he did right…

The story which broke last night about Nigel Farage’s Reform Party is still developing, and we will wait to see the results of the investigations into it. But in a nutshell, the investigative group Verbatim, which was founded by journalists from the Centre for Climate Reporting, conducted a sting operation, where one journalist posed as the son of a supposed wealthy American donor.

In the video, which was presented by Channel 4 news, Reform’s Head of Policy James Orr, who serves as an Associate Professor at Cambridge’s Faculty of Divinity, and who became a Christian through an Alpha Course back in 2003, is seen approaching the journalist to enquire whether he would fund a poll which Reform had organised through the consultancy JL Partners. Two subsequent polls take place in similar circumstances, ‘funded’ by the journalist and the ‘American money’, despite having seemingly been commissioned by Reform. During these subsequent polls, Farage’s Chief of Staff Dan Jukes is involved.

Later in the video, Jukes suggests to the journalist that his ‘father’ might be able to make a substantial donation to Reform if he passes the money through his son first, as a British citizen; the figure discussed is £500,000. Eventually the journalist is introduced to Farage himself, although it is unclear quite how much Farage actually knew about any of the arrangements.

Both situations would be against the electoral rules. Money to pay for polling commissioned by a party would count as a donation, and the American ‘father’ would not be considered a permissible donor. Bob Posner, a lawyer and former CEO of the UK Electoral Commission, told Channel Four that there should now be a criminal investigation as “serious criminal offences” may have been committed.

Both Orr and Jukes have stood down pending an internal investigation, although Reform deny any wrongdoing, and have said that they were “the target of a hoax perpetuated by foreign funded climate change activists.” Nigel Farage has himself dismissed them as “a couple of members - people that work for us, contractors - who have said some injudicious things at best”, although in practice, they have been central to the Reform Project.

At this stage, it is not entirely clear who knew what, and quite what wrongdoing was deliberate. But at the very least, questions about professionalism will remain.

And of course, Mr Farage himself has only just been re-elected to Parliament after resigning due to extensive coverage of his own financial affairs. There is considerable speculation that he will be forced out of Parliament again when the investigation concludes into the undeclared £5 million donation he received before entering Parliament.

Sometimes it’s not even the leader’s fault. There are problems which are just too big for a Prime Minister to solve. Whatever they try to do, it doesn’t seem to work.

Take the economy and the cost-of-living. Yes, of course, political decisions make a difference. Keep raising taxes, and you’ll see an exodus of high-earners, low-growth and everyone becoming increasingly squeezed.

But at the same time…you can’t just blame this Government (or the previous one) for the difficulties we’re in. This is an unusually volatile and difficult time to grow an economy, coming out of a global pandemic, and with the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East driving up bills. There might be small things a Government can do with tinkering around the edges (for example, extending the 5p cut to fuel duty), and there might be things they can do which don’t help (petrol in the UK is subject to heavy taxes), but they are not the main reason why things are what they are.

It was Andy Burnham’s first time addressing Parliament this week, and he refused to rule out borrowing more to increase spending at PMQs on Wednesday. The response to relatively minor statements from him was stark, as the costs of UK borrowing rose to their highest level in decades. We are now at a stage where Britain pays over 5.2% interest on its benchmark 10-year debt (by comparison, that was around 4.6% at the worst point in the Liz Truss fiasco). Long-term borrowing costs hit their highest level in 28 years.

The wiggle-room for an incoming Prime Minister is smaller than ever. The Telegraph summed up the situation facing the Prime Minister like this: “For all Burnham’s cheery talk of ditching the dour approach of Sir Keir Starmer and governing with a fresh ‘sense of optimism’, the former Manchester mayor’s options are severely constrained by the cold, hard reality of the nation’s dire finances. Much as he wants to boost spending on everything from council housing to defence to social care, the near-£3tn national debt bequeathed to him puts tight limits on any new borrowing plans…It presents serious economic and political risks for the Prime Minister.”

Or take immigration: successive governments have been unable to fix the small-boats crisis. Or the NHS: we pour more money in without better results. The welfare bill keeps rising, our global influence keeps diminishing, the divisions in our own society keep growing. These problems do not have easy fixes, and it is naive to just assume that changing the person at the top will sort them out.

Leaders who make bad decisions, leaders with character flaws and leaders who face problems which are too big to solve.

That summarises the last week. But it could just as easily summarise the last decade of politics: Liz Truss made bad decisions. Boris Johnson had character flaws. Rishi Sunak and Theresa May faced problems too big for them to solve.

For these are patterns as old as time, known in every society, in every age. Recently, I was preaching at a church on Psalm 101: it’s a Psalm where David, as God’s King, promises to get to grips with his administration and to lead a blameless life. Later Israelite kings might have used it in their ceremonies, recommitting to clean up their government. In the Church of England even today, it appears in the Book of Common Prayer, as the psalm for the anniversary of the King’s accession.

David commits to leading a ‘blameless life’. He says, “I will conduct the affairs of my house with a blameless heart”, and promises to remove wrongdoers from his government. But of course, even the King after God’s own heart didn’t live up to those standards either. He looked at Bathsheba while she bathed, he broke faith with Uriah and sent him to die, and then tried to cover up the whole affair so no one would know. His reign descends into anarchy, as his sons rise against one another and him, and his generals commit murder and seek personal revenge.

For there is only one Messiah. There has only ever been one person who can “make all things new”. Jesus is the one true King, the one who never made any mistakes. Peter, quoting Isaiah, reminds us, “He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth.” And He is the King who is utterly sovereign, whose purposes will stand for ever, and who cannot be stopped, even by death itself.

Sometimes it will be right for there to be change: some errors (whether political or moral) are sufficiently serious that it is right for a leader to stand aside. If a political leader can no longer be respected, or if they are shown to lack integrity, it is difficult to see how they can lead a nation. And of course, in a democracy, we have the right at the ballot-box to give our verdict and choose an alternative path.

But maybe, at other times, we might need to recognise that our expectations are too high. No political leader can be a Messiah. No one can sort out all problems. And leaders will sometimes make mistakes. There was much written in the aftermath of Keir Starmer’s resignation as Prime Minister about whether Britain is ungovernable today. I’m not sure it is. But in the wake of six Prime Ministers in seven years, you can see why people are asking the question.

It’s why - even if I personally might not like his politics - I’ll be praying for Andy Burnham as he gets on with the serious job of governing. It’s why I won’t be calling for him to go at the first (or the second, or the third!) sign of error, but only when it is genuinely untenable. And it’s why I won’t expect too much (or too little) of any Prime Minister, for each one is a flawed, imperfect individual, and a sinner just like me.

The Psalmist wrote, “Do not put your trust in princes, in human beings, who cannot save.” Instead, he offers us a better way:

“Blessed are those whose help is the God of Jacob,
whose hope is in the Lord their God.

He is the Maker of heaven and earth,
the sea, and everything in them—
he remains faithful forever.

He upholds the cause of the oppressed
and gives food to the hungry.
The Lord sets prisoners free,
the Lord gives sight to the blind,
the Lord lifts up those who are bowed down,
the Lord loves the righteous.

The Lord watches over the foreigner
and sustains the fatherless and the widow,
but he frustrates the ways of the wicked.

The Lord reigns forever,
your God, O Zion, for all generations.

Praise the Lord.”

(Psalm 146:5-10)