The British right is increasingly invoking the Christian tradition: the question is what it hopes to gain from doing so.
Lamorna Ash in the Guardian goes on to shine a light on the questions around Tommy Robinson and Farage's 'conversion' to Christian ethics as the far right continues to adopt an American style approach to British politics.
(Rikki Doolan, a British evangelical pastor who was the witness to Robinson’s conversion at HMP Woodhill, has suggested that Robinson first grasped the
political value that Christianity could have for his movement while attending far-right rallies in Poland.) In its most nationalist guise, this new racism views Christianity as synonymous with whiteness...Other religions, but especially Islam, can be repurposed as existential threats, making religion into a zero-sum game: you are either for Christianity, or you are working to destroy it.
In October, Neville Watson, the only black branch chair of Reform UK, defected to the Christian People’s Alliance, a small independent party. Shocked by the strong presence of Islamophobia at the “unite the kingdom” rally,
he declared that those present were advancing
“an ideology that is not Christian”. Watson was brought up a socially conservative evangelical Christian:
“I’m coming from a very strong, Christian, love thy neighbour sort of perspective,” he said at the time. This is the first indication of a struggle for the meaning of Christianity among the hard-right. It could have significant implications for the movement’s future.
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