I’m not here as a practising politician. I’m here as a penitent Christian

Gordon Brown, Greenbelt, 25 August

We have poverty on the rise, we have bed poverty on the rise, we have children in care on the rise. We have to do something about it

Ibid.

Aside from Geoffrey Boycott, her cricketing hero, [Theresa] May’s father was her biggest inspiration. “His absolute conviction was that he was there for everybody who lived in his parish; I’m there for everybody who lives in my constituency. To him it was regardless of whether they were coming to his church or not. For me it’s regardless of how somebody has voted. Once you’re in that position you’re there to support and help them, to work for them”

Theresa May, interview in The Sunday Times Magazine, 27 August

Growing up as the daughter of a vicar, she says, isn’t so different from being the child of a politician. “There was a combination there of public service and public speaking. In the vicarage there was very much a sense that we were there for other people”

Ibid.

The flip side of the “me-me-me, aren’t I marvellous?” culture is “aren’t the frail, the disabled, the elderly and the incontinent despicable?” It’s the new paganism, the pre-Christian idea of the heroic perfect person, fit, beautiful, strong and domineering. And if not that, you deserve to be trampled

Danny Kruger, Conservative MP, interview, The Times, 26 August
 

I’m afraid the Church had a very bad Covid: apologised for slavery and locked the doors. I don’t want to come over as the Christian MP but there is such a metaphor for our society in what the Church could be doing. There’s a shortage of vicars while the money is spent on outreach and comms

Ibid.

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