Humza Yousaf is gone after a year of rule. As usual, the resignation speech was an interesting document. I shall ignore all the insignificant reasons for his departure and notice only the significant utterances. One thing I should say is that, in general, the style was not as precious or pompous or rancorous as an equivalent speech in England would be. It is, of course, still flawed English (or Scottish). For instance: the sentence, “Let’s also acknowledge far too often, in our country hatred continues to rear its ugly head”, is quite funny, as if Yousaf is in the habit of acknowledging something far too often. (I can hear The Broons: “Och, Pa, dinnae acknowledge that agin: find summat else tae talk aboot.”)
In the speech he said the following:
People who looked like me were not in positions of political influence, let alone leading governments when I was younger. But we now live in a U.K. that has a British-Hindu prime minister, a Muslim mayor of London, a black Welsh first minister and for a little while longer, a Scots Asian first minister of this country. So for those who decry that multiculturalism has failed across the U.K., I would suggest that the evidence is quite to the contrary.
I find this sort of thing a bit odd. First of all, he gets his racial and his religious categories tangled up. The “people who looked like me” stuff is dull and old. Thomas Cromwell, son of a butcher, could have said the same thing: he probably did not have the high colour of an aristocrat. And eliding looking-like-something and believing-something is to go rather too fast, especially since, as we shall see, Yousaf is saying something rather important. I shall ignore the double negative. (Does he add ‘de-’ to ‘cry’ because he thinks it sounds more negative? ‘I cry’ but my enemies, ‘they decry’?) But let us go on, since he wants to add a bit of sermonising:
Each and every one of us must resist the temptation of populism at the expense of minorities.
This is very interesting. The word ‘populism’ is gradually becoming demonised: now classed together with ‘racism’, ‘fascism’, ‘imperialism’: when in fact it just means a-politics-of-appeal-to-the-people. (Populism is just what politicians do on a daily basis in a modern democracy. It is what you do, Yousaf.) I like and even admire the phrase, “the temptation of populism”: though I wonder why populism is inevitably opposed to minorities. It seems to me that one can also have a populism that involves a celebration of minorities: indeed, this is the populism of our age – even if it is not actually very popular below the level at which the political elites operate.
Yousaf of course throws in a slight reference to Gaza and the “horrific humanitarian catastrophe”: missing, apparently the fact (as reported by Peter Harris) that the war in Gaza has involved a rather low incidence of civilian deaths by usual standards (although he’s not alone in overlooking that, obviously). Then we get an admission of the way Scotland is stitched up by the political class:
We have an electoral system that is designed for no political party to have an overall majority. Devolution’s founding fathers and mothers, rightly in their wisdom, believed that no one loses out by politicians sharing wisdom, sharing counsel, sharing ideas.
Dubious reasoning (and odd prose, when read), but the trick is in the phrase “no one”. Aye, no politician loses out if they all have to share from the same plate. And that is about it. Fairly dignified. Not too bad. He adds that he is not willing to trade his principles, but this is just the standard cant of the retiring politician, whose clothes miraculously become whiter and hands cleaner as he is escorted out of the building.
What is the historical significance of Humza Yousaf? Well, he does get close to that significance, though he makes a mess of it by implying that his point is about race or culture. The historical significance of Humza Yousaf is that he was a Muslim. It amazed me that the press barely made mention of this in all his time as First Minister: though I am not exactly scouring the newspapers, I saw no serious analysis of it. For the last year England has been, in effect, ruled by a Hindu, while Scotland has been, in effect, ruled by a Muslim. This, by any standards, is remarkable: especially so, to anyone who knows any history.
The history is perhaps tedious for those of you who just want to focus on the present, but it is necessary. Our country was a church-state for over a thousand years. Indeed, for most of that time it was much more of a church than a state. Bede’s history, for instance, was of the English church. The formal influence of the Papacy of course complicated things, especially between the 12th and 16th Centuries, but some historians say that the English church was always relatively independent, even before the Reformation. From the Reformation until the early 19th Century everyone supposed that England was a church-state, and Scotland a kirk-state. Our equivalent of the French Revolution was delayed for a generation (1. because we were fighting the French, 2. because we had killed our king in 1649, and 3. because we had enjoyed a very different sort of revolution in 1688): but it occurred between 1828 and 1832 when we dismantled the church-state and erected, in its place – a mere state. For the first time, it was possible to imagine the establishment of a political order no longer dedicated to the truth of Christianity. It was no longer to be a requirement that all Members of Parliament be members of the Churches of England or Scotland or Ireland. John Keble declared that “National Apostasy” had taken place. Now it was possible for the state to believe something other than Christianity.
Matters proceeded slowly. Although Disraeli is famous for being a Jew, in fact he was a romantic if somewhat cynical convert to Anglicanism. Gladstone and Salisbury were stern and unbending Christians: though Gladstone of course capitulated to liberalism. Christianity mattered to Baldwin, Chamberlain and occasionally Churchill: also to many Labour leaders. Thatcher used Christian imagery, and Blair was the “Vicar of St Albion”, even if Alistair Campbell told everyone, including Blair, that New Labour “did not do God”. But it took almost two hundred years for the demise of the church-state to be crowned, so to speak, by a Hindu Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and a Muslim First Minister of Scotland – not to mention the Mayor of London, who is also Muslim. Modern Britain being what it is, I have seen barely any mention of this world-historically-significant sign of the times. One can only wonder what Alfred the Great, Edward the Confessor, Thomas Becket, Thomas More, Elizabeth I, John Milton, Samuel Johnson, Edmund Burke and John Henry Newman would have thought about it. None of them was a populist: but they might have believed the matter worth some thought.
There is more. Is it not remarkable that while Christian politicians have tended in recent times to obfuscate their religion, our recent rulers have done the opposite? Rishi Sunak wears a red string bracelet of religious significance. He left a statue of Lord Ganesh to watch over Boris Johnson when the latter was using the office of No. 11. And he lit Diwali candles outside the door of No. 10. Meanwhile, Yousaf led his family in prayers in Bute House, the official residence of the First Minister, on the very day he arrived there, and posted pictures of this event online. Consider. How would it have been received if Thatcher had worn a pectoral cross? Or if Churchill had made a Chi Rho with his hand (as the saints do in Byzantine icons) rather than the ‘V’ sign? Or if Blair had ignored Campbell and ‘done God’ by posting pictures of himself leading his family in Holy Communion in the Cabinet Room?
I only ask. Perhaps this is an awkward question, since these things are not meant to matter nowadays. But is it not remarkable that Christian politicians are made to be embarrassed about their Christianity, whereas Hindu and Muslim politicians, so far from being intimidated by having minority status, feel free to advertise their faith, and even carry out religious rituals in places of political significance, and do so as if what they are doing is simply charming? I am not sure about the Hindu rituals, but it is possible that there are some Muslims around the world who looked at the images of prayer in Bute House and thought that some sort of religious sovereignty was being asserted.
In 1790 Edmund Burke in Reflections on the Revolution in France wrote that if Christianity is overthrown “we are apprehensive… that some uncouth, pernicious and degrading superstition, might take the place of it.” Now, you may not be Christian, and you may not care about Christianity, but I’ll wager you are now convinced that some uncouth, pernicious and degrading superstitions have taken over our country. There is a war going on, beneath all these emollient phrases about diversity and multiculturalism and minorities. The pernicious superstitions obviously include the NHS religion of ‘health and safety’, the Protestor religions of Black Lives Matter, Just Stop Oil and From The River To The Sea, and the Government religions of Lockdown, Net Zero and Open Borders. All of this forms an incoherent set of creeds, and I suppose it is apt that for a while we had a Hindu and a Muslim presiding over it. But has anyone thought about whether, if, in ridding ourselves of Christianity, we have really wanted to have a vast complex of secular religions imposed on us in its stead, which are then decorated by the rites and prayers of other ancient religions? Burke warned us. Perhaps it has taken us two hundred years to see what Burke saw in 1790.
The most significant thing that Humza Yousaf did as a politician was to lead his family in prayer at Bute House.
Dr. James Alexander is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at Bilkent University in Turkey.
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