When Alastair Campbell said “we don’t do God”, it was because he knew that Tony Blair very much did. But as Sir Keir Starmer becomes the first atheist prime minister for decades, Britain has elected the most irreligious parliament in history.
Forty per cent of MPs chose to make a secular affirmation rather than a religious oath on being sworn into the Commons this week, up from 24 per cent at the start of the last parliament in 2019.
Half of the cabinet, including Starmer, took the non-religious option to profess allegiance to the king as Britain elected the first parliament as godless as the nation at large.
Analysis by Humanists UK has found that 249 of the 625 MPs whose decisions are known chose to affirm. However, the majority of MPs, 338, swore on the Bible, usually the King James version.
There were 14 Muslim MPs, who swore on the Quran, and Rishi Sunak was one of three MPs to swear on the Bhagavad Gita, the Hindu holy book. There are also likely to be a handful of religious MPs, including Tim Farron, the former leader of the Liberal Democrats and a Christian, who affirmed because their beliefs prohibit oaths.
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The big jump in irreligious MPs was the result of the Labour landslide in which Starmer’s party won 412 MPs. Almost half of Labour MPs — 47 per cent — affirmed, compared with only 9 per cent of Conservatives. The Liberal Democrats, who won a record 72 seats, also had 47 per cent of their MPs make an affirmation.
The Greens are the most irreligious party, with all of their four MPs affirming, and six of the SNP’s nine MPs did the same. One of Nigel Farage’s five Reform MPs affirmed.
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Andrew Copson, chief executive of Humanists UK, said: “For the first time ever, the number of those affirming versus swearing an oath has come close to reflecting the beliefs of the population as a whole. We’ve known for a while that the UK is one of the least religious countries in the world. We now have one of the least religious national parliaments in the world, too.”
About 53 per cent of people in Britain say they belong to no religion, and 42 per cent do not believe in a god.
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Chine McDonald, director of the Theos religion think tank, said: “What we see reflected here is a falling away of cultural, nostalgic Christianity and a rise in the number of options available in an increasingly diverse and multi-religious society. It’s no surprise that a younger and less conservative group of parliamentarians might be less wedded to cultural Christianity, yet there are still a good number with a vibrant and active faith.”
All new MPs are required to swear allegiance to the monarch, a requirement that has long prevented Sinn Fein MPs from taking their seats. MPs have been allowed to make a secular affirmation since 1888, after the cause célèbre of Charles Bradlaugh, the first atheist MP, who was barred from taking his seat over his refusal to swear on the Bible, but was repeatedly re-elected.
Starmer has said he believes in “irreducible human dignity” and that “all people have rights which cannot be taken away”, but he is the first prime minister for many decades not to claim adherence to any religion. Neither Winston Churchill nor Clement Attlee were religious, and James Callaghan, a former Sunday school teacher, lost his faith but never renounced his Baptist chapel.
Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton, quoting Boris Johnson, once described his Christian faith as “like Magic FM in the Chilterns, it comes and it goes”. Liz Truss said she “shared the values” of the Church of England.
However, Theresa May, Blair and Gordon Brown were all devout Christians. Campbell blocked reporters from asking Blair about his faith for fear that voters would find it off-putting, and civil servants discouraged him from ending speeches with “God bless Britain”.
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Blair said it was “a shame” that discussion of religion was discouraged, and Brown said it required politicians “to bring an incomplete version of ourselves into the public arena”.
