MJ: You’ve previously mentioned that you don’t share the Christian faith. Would your government do God?
EM: I think what’s important for me is the word respect. Respect for different faiths, respect for people who aren’t religious; respect and tolerance are the important watch words. I’m not going to claim that I do God, but what I do think is important is that sense of respect. I have huge admiration for so many people in the Church and the work they do. I believe in social justice, a more equal, fairer society, and I see those values played out among so many people in the Christian community who worship God, and spend so much of their time ensuring people have better lives, whether through food banks, volunteering in the local community or youth work. I have huge admiration for that, and I’d be a Prime Minister who had huge admiration for that.
MJ: How important is the role of the Church in society?
EM: I think there are so many injustices in our society. If I think about the groups that I was with earlier this week - XLP and their work with young people, Open Doors and their work with refugee communities, the Trussell Trust who run so many of the food banks in our country - in their different ways, the extraordinary organisations are multiplied thousands of times over by so many people, who in their own communities are doing good work, decent work. Just thinking about the food banks, for example, it’s not just that the Trussell Trust has drawn attention to the plight of so many people who can’t afford to properly feed themselves, but they’re also helping people on a daily basis. That’s just one example of what so many Christians around Britain are doing.
MJ: You also mentioned XLP, working with young people across London and across the country. They are dealing with young people who are turning away from education, turning away from offers of employment to survive in a different way. How concerned are you for the state of young people?
EM: I am worried about young people. I think many people in their generation will be thinking, what’s my generation got against them? Because it seems like, whether it’s in relation to educational opportunity, employment, or housing, they feel like they’re getting a raw end of the deal, that the opportunities available to my generation aren’t available to theirs. Then we’ve got some young people, and XLP works with them, who are really at the sharp end of that; maybe they’ve been excluded from school, or they’ve found themselves getting into trouble with the police, and I think that’s such a waste of potential for our society, such a cost to our society. I was talking to Patrick Regan who runs XLP about some of the ways to deal with this and he was emphasising the importance of mentoring, and what lots of people can do in terms of mentoring. It’s not easy. There are no straightforward solutions, but I think there are things we can do, to give hope and opportunity back to young people.
MJ: Is it the role of the Church to fill gaps they see, or should it be the government stopping those gaps from appearing in the first place?
EM: It’s a complicated question; government’s got to do its bit. It shouldn’t abdicate its responsibility; it should be more of a partnership. So what XLP would say, is that they want to do the work, but they need the funding in order to do it. It’s more like partnership and less like government just withdrawing and saying we can’t do anything, we’re going to leave it to you to pick up the pieces. Voluntary organisations and volunteers will always play a role in our society, the question is: where does the government’s role end, and the volunteers’ role begin?
MJ: Lots of charities will be saying that they’re desperate to work with government and get that partnership; how do you foresee a government under your leadership working with groups like XLP, and others across the country to meet these needs?
EM: Well, I’ve got a bit of experience of this, because I was minister for charities; it was my first job in government, under the last Labour government. I think what most third sector or charity organisations want is an understanding of what they can do. Sometimes it’ll be advocacy and campaigning, sometimes it’ll be delivering services, sometimes it’ll be building capacity and community. Whatever the level of funding, the thing I found was that there’s a desire for a bit of stability, so it’s not just monthto- month grants but stable funding for charities so that they can actually plan their work. Otherwise, you just get lots of waste because you give them money, take away the money, and so on. I think we can develop a better relationship with the charitable sector.
MJ: What are you going to do to win back the trust that politicians have lost in recent years?
EM: I think it’s hard, but it starts with making promises you know you can keep. I feel the single biggest challenge our country faces is that so many people feel that the country works for them, and maybe it works if you’ve got money, if you’re the richest in society, but it doesn’t work for most people. And I think we’ve got to honour people’s hard work, what people do, much better as a country. So if you were to describe what my government would be about, it would be putting everyday people first. So many people just don’t feel that they’re being put first at the moment, in our country. If I came along and said ‘elect me in May 2015, and everything will be different overnight’, people would say, ‘that’s not true’ or credible. So it’s about saying, we can do some things, like put our young people back to work, raise the minimum wage because that’ll make life a bit easier for low paid workers, we can do something about zero-hour contracts, and we can help our NHS. So I think it’s about a different direction, a different way of running the country, and that’s what I offer.
MJ: In the last year or so, from the Christian point of view, many have felt let-down over the issue of same-sex marriage, as none of the major parties put it in their manifestos, yet it was still fasttracked through. I also think of the rights to profess your faith in the workplace - people have felt that Christian views have been marginalised. What would you say to those fears?
EM: Well, first of all, I want to say to people I’m sorry they feel that. Part of being a tolerant society and the kind of society I believe in is that people of all faiths and none don’t feel marginalised. Now, that doesn’t mean there aren’t going to be disagreements, for example, on equal marriage, but I think it’s really important that Christians don’t feel that. That they feel not just comfortable in their faith, but comfortable that their faith is respected in our country. And I think the only answer is dialogue, and to listen. Politicians aren’t very good at listening, generally.
‘I think there are things we can do to give hope and opportunity back to young people’
EM: There’s a saying that the country’s run by those who turn up, and I think that’s really important. It’s great that so many Christians take their responsibility to vote so seriously. Obviously, we want to engage Christians across our country in what is a big project to change Britain. People are cynical about politics, but change doesn’t simply come from politicians, in fact, it doesn’t often come from politicians, it comes from people. If you think about the big changes, the big gains that have been made in our country, they happen because people have made them happen. If you think about the issue of food poverty, it’s been made an issue by the churches, by the food banks, by organisations like the Trussell Trust. Politics is too important to be left to politicians. It’s when people get involved that we get better outcomes as a country. So I would encourage people not just to vote, but to get involved in debates. Obviously I want people to get involved in the Labour party, to change the country.
MJ: In the last few months we’ve seen lots of celebrities trying to get involved in the political process, most notably Russell Brand. What do you make of it, when you see people like him appear on Question time, trying to take part in the whole process?
EM: I’m less anti-him than most, I think. I don’t agree with him when he says people shouldn’t vote, but I think he’s reflecting what many people feel. He’s surfaced the argument, now my job is to take it on. What’s one of the biggest challenges that we face as a country? It’s people saying politics doesn’t matter. The most heart-sinking feeling as a politician is not when people say, ‘I’m going to vote for somebody else’, it’s actually when they say, ‘I’m fed up with the lot of you, I’m not interested, and I’ve never been interested.’ So anything that can be done to engage people in politics is important.
