Podcast: Faith in public life: A conversation with former MP Miriam Cates

This article is part of the Affinity Talks Gospel Podcast series.

In this episode of Affinity Talks Gospel, hosts Lizzie Harewood and Graham Nicholls welcome former MP Miriam Cates to discuss her journey from a career in genetics to a prominent role in British politics.

Miriam shares how her Christian faith has guided her political decisions, shaped her views on social issues, and informed her stance on education, gender ideology, and family values. She offers valuable insights into the importance of Christians engaging in public life and maintaining courage in the face of modern societal challenges.

Throughout the episode, Miriam emphasises the impact of her faith on her political career, advocating for a conservatism that prioritises family, community, and national identity. She critiques the liberal economic model, highlights the need for ideological clarity within the Conservative Party, and raises concerns about ideological influences in the education system – particularly within relationships and sex education. Miriam stresses the role of traditional values in child development and addresses declining birth rates, linking them to societal stability and a cultural shift in views on children.

Miriam also shares details of her new endeavours outside of Parliament, including roles in media and think tanks, where she continues to engage thoughtfully on pressing social issues.

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Topics addressed in this Podcast:

• Introduction and background – Miriam shares her journey from her upbringing in Sheffield to her initial career in genetics and eventual entry into politics.
• Faith and personal values – Discussion of Miriam’s Christian upbringing and how her faith has consistently shaped her life decisions.
• Political ideology and conservatism – Miriam explains her views on conservatism, emphasizing family, community, and national identity, and critiques liberal economic policies.
• Conservative Party dynamics – Miriam addresses the ideological divisions within the Conservative Party and the importance of ideological clarity.
• Educational concerns – Miriam critiques the influence of ideology in the education system, focusing particularly on relationships and sex education (RSE) and safeguarding issues around gender identity.
• Traditional family values – Emphasis on the role of family stability, especially married parents, in child development and societal wellbeing.
• Declining birth rates and fertility – Miriam links declining birth rates to societal stability and cultural views on family and children, addressing the economic and social implications.
• Future career plans – Miriam shares her next steps post-Parliament, including her work in media and think tanks, where she continues to address social issues.
• Encouragement for Christian engagement in public life – Miriam advises Christians on engaging with politics, offering insights on courage, unity, and the impact of encouragement and prayer for those in public service.
• Closing remarks and prayer requests

Transcript

[AI generated]

[0:11] Welcome to Affinity Talks Gospel. I’m Lizzie Harewood. And I’m Graham Nicholls. And we’re very glad that you’ve joined us. And we have a very special guest. We call them all very special guests. So there’s nothing particularly unique. You are a very special guest. And it’s Miriam Cates, who was an MP. Welcome, Miriam. Hello. Nice to be with you. I hope we’ve not insulted you at the outset there.

[0:38] Um well yeah i was just thinking that i pretty much introduced everyone by saying that we have a very special guest and i thought well there must be a hierarchy perhaps we have to say very very special guests for some like miriam for example um tell us a little bit about yourself miriam where where you were from originally and kind of what your what your status is now in life, anything you want to tell us really yes i was born in sheffield uh in the heart of south yorkshire um my parents actually moved there I think two or three weeks before I was born so they they well they’re from all over the place but they’ve been living in London so they were new to Sheffield um grew up there went to the local comprehensive school uh did well at school went to Cambridge did genetics trained to be a teacher uh came back to Sheffield to do that I got married had three kids uh took a career break um and then started getting involved in community life really uh in our village just to the north of Sheffield at the PTA parish council things like that and then when our youngest child who’s now 10 uh was in the year before school so his preschool year I started to think about what I should do next and um.

[1:51] I started looking into politics, considering standing for a local election. And to cut a long story short, a family friend asked me to stand as a conservative for an unwinnable city council seat. I felt it was the right thing to do. I did it, got more involved in politics and became an MP. So that’s the kind of potted history.

[2:10] But I had a fantastic, happy childhood. My parents are Christians,

[2:14] long history of faith in my family. My grandparents were missionaries. um so very very blessed with my heritage really yeah just a quick question on the politics um it it doesn’t sound as though you were like an active perhaps you were students or a political person at sixth form college and then at university or were you no i i was interested in politics around the age of 11 i think i am i was given an old radio that only tuned to long wave and so i was forced to listen to radio four um and i listened to the today program and westminster hour and and programs like that and got a sense of what our political system was like was very interested in the debates in the house of commons and how they how ideas became policies and things like that i wouldn’t have called myself party political i didn’t know anybody who was actually involved in politics but i was certainly very interested in it um but i wasn’t involved in student politics at all um and until i became um until i was asked to stand for election i wasn’t a member of the conservative party wow so why why did you go down that route in particular and miriam um well i i i always thought that if i was to get involved in politics god would have to present an opportunity because as i said i didn’t know anybody in politics i wouldn’t have even known how to stand for election or how the different parties worked.

[3:37] But when I started exploring it, I assumed that I would join the Labour Party because I lived in Sheffield, I’ve lived in Sheffield all my life, and it’s as red as red can be, it certainly was at that time.

[3:48] And so I just assumed that to be elected, I would need to join the Labour Party. But I obviously looked into what they believed and very quickly came to the conclusion that even if I wanted to join, I don’t think they would have me. I have very different views. This was during the time of corbyn’s leadership so obviously different to now um i looked at the lib dems but just didn’t feel that was the right thing to do and then as i said i had this opportunity to uh join the conservative party which i did i then did you’ll be reassured to know look into what conservatives actually believe and and started reading more about conservative philosophy and actually found very beneficially that i am actually a conservative so fortunately uh i did It worked out. But I suppose we get hung up on the idea of conservatism as being Thatcherism. Now, I don’t think Thatcher was a conservative. I think she was a radical, certainly economically. I’m not saying that what she did wasn’t necessary for its time. Certainly some of it was.

[4:45] But it certainly wasn’t conservative. The idea of kind of global economic liberalism where you just buy from the, you know, the cheapest seller and it doesn’t matter where things are made or whether or not your own industry survives, that’s not conservative. And I think what’s really fascinating about the election of Donald Trump and J.D. Vance is that they are not economic liberals. They are what you might have called conservative before the 1980s. So I think it’s easy to get hung up on that tourism and the damage that it undoubtedly did. But to me, that’s not what conservatism is. It’s about having strong families, strong communities, strong nation, you know, strong cultural heritage. That’s what it’s about. So I think it’s easy to get.

[5:26] Conservatives are not very good at explaining what conservatism is and selling it. But, you know, I think that’s something that needs to change. Well, they often say that it is a very broad church, don’t they, conservatism? Well, the Conservative Party is too broad a church because it contains both conservatives and liberals, and they disagree fundamentally on quite a lot of things. For example, the role of international law. As a conservative, I think the highest level of human loyalty is the nation. That’s certainly the level of democratic accountability. And whilst I do think countries should work together, I don’t think international law should actually have any jurisdiction over individual voters’ lives. Liberals, on the other hand, think completely differently and that’s the source of the splits and the fights within the Conservative Party. What was interesting, I don’t know if you’ve read it, but I’ve been listening to the audiobook of Unleashed by Boris Johnson.

[6:22] I haven’t read it. It’s really, really interesting. You probably know him well enough to not be so interested or you know all the stories but it’s a really good read he writes well and he reads his own book well you know in a way that’s just interesting just from a pure entertainment point of view it’s interesting but um he talks about the boris buses, and uh and then the boris bikes and he makes the point that uh the left-wing people particularly the labor party involved in in london politics understand buses because it’s all about collectivism they didn’t understand bikes because it’s all about individual sort of responsibility and he does make a very interesting observation i thought i hadn’t really thought about that now i don’t know whether you’d call that conservatism about kind of individual self-reliance and so forth but he was just saying they just couldn’t get their head around the idea because They just like the idea of kind of encasing people in a sort of protective shell and transporting them that that they could understand because it’s all about collectivism. Yeah, I didn’t realize we could distill, you know, kind of complex political thought down to whether you ride a bike or work in the Netherlands. Yeah, I don’t know.

[7:30] Tell us, Miriam, about your faith, because it’s no guarantee that you would be a Christian just because you’ve got missionary family and, you know, parents of Christians. And all that upbringing uh so how did it work for you yourself um so yes so as i said very strong christian family brought up going to church being active members of a church um and you know learning.

[7:55] About god learning about prayer and all the christian disciplines and i think i i can’t remember a time when i didn’t believe in god and i didn’t believe in that the bible was true i think I always have uh believed that um but I think when it was probably my final year of university when I’ve.

[8:13] Really felt god speak to me saying if you believe it’s true then it has to be everything and it’s not it’s not a hobby like uh playing football is a hobby or um you know being interested in art is a hobby it has to be everything in the foundation of your whole life and i suppose since then um i’ve just gone through the the process that christian disciples go through of gradually um trying to become more and more like jesus to learn more and more about the faith um and you know live as live as the bible says so i suppose like a lot of people born up brought up in christian families you go through this process of um living through your parents faith which of course is absolutely appropriate for for children um and then at some point deciding to to own it as your own it as your own um so i suppose yeah that that’s that’s my story really and would you say that your faith has had any kind of massive influence on your decision to pursue politics? I mean, yeah, you kind of mentioned earlier, you kind of hinted at it, the greatest kind of human authority we have is the nation, I guess, you know, the idea of the nation state.

[9:21] But what about ultimate authority as a human towards something greater? Has that had any impact on your decision to pursue a political career yes absolutely and i think because um it’s very clear really.

[9:40] That what jesus requires from us what what god requires from us is is first and foremost obedience you know we’re his yes we’re his children we’re his friends but at the end of the day he is he is god and he knows what’s best for us and he has a plan and um you know i’ve always believed that, not that at all that God’s trying to control us, but that actually if we surrender our own plans to his and try and hear what he’s saying and how the Holy Spirit’s trying to guide us, then that is the best thing we could possibly do. And I very strongly did feel that God was leading me into politics. I felt it was the right and obedient thing to join the Conservative Party, even though that I didn’t know where that would lead. And when I had the opportunity to stand, to essentially apply to become an MP. I prayed about that very seriously and, again, felt that was the right opportunity. And I think that…

[10:36] There are Christians in all political parties and we want Christians in all political parties because if you listen to Jesus’s parables about being the salt of the earth, in every single human organization you can think of, we want Christians to be there because we know they can have a great influence. But I felt like the opportunity for me was in the Conservative Party and I first and foremost joined because I believe that was what God was saying, not because I personally had a plan to do that. And I think that’s how I’ve tried to act throughout my time in politics, is about what is God saying. Yes, I have some sort of loyalty to my constituents. Yes, I need to honour what the whips are telling me to do. Yes, I need to be aware of what journalists are saying.

[11:28] But ultimately, we work for the Lord. And that has guided me and what the kind of issues that I’ve become involved in and what I have and haven’t done. So, yes, absolutely. As a Christian, we are first and foremost citizens of the kingdom of heaven. And that is the highest level of spiritual authority. Is there a reason you particularly went, you can define conservatism however you want, because you’re in control of this conversation now.

[11:58] But defining it however you want is there a reason you became that rather than something else was it was it um a spiritual reason accepting that you might not be right but it was a spiritual reason was it more a i think these economic aspects work better because that’s more of a sort of judgment call isn’t it as to um yeah i mean economics isn’t an exact sign so i say this is what i,

[12:21] think of as conservatism. So I think a better word is actually orthodox rather than conservative. So I believe in the Judeo-Christian foundation of Western civilization, the foundation of our civilization on the idea that human beings are made in the image of God, and essentially that the Ten Commandments were given as a good rule for societies in anywhere, in any place, and that those boundaries that God gave to the Israelites are the best possible way of organising society for the benefit of all, to make sure that everybody is provided for and protected for, to protect the especially vulnerable, so widows and orphans, if you want to use Old Testament language.

[13:05] And those were the foundations of Western civilisation. And so to be conservative in our context in the British context is to want to conserve those foundations and the principal route through which people are protected is the family and actually we know from statistics it’s absolutely obvious undeniable that the best possible outcomes for children are secured when they’re born to married parents you don’t have to be a Christian or religious to be able to see that in the data in every single way, whether it’s economic, health.

[13:46] Mental health, those are the best chances in life. And guess what? It fits with the pattern that the Bible gives us. And then families working together as communities to take responsibility for each other, to love your neighbour without being interfered with by the state particularly much. Again, that’s what creates strong society. As we’ve seen the breakdown of the church, of membership organisations, we all know that we’ve lost an awful lot because of that. And then the idea of the nation.

[14:14] Being distinctive not better than anybody else’s nation but our own nation because we were born into it having a sense of loyalty to the nation as a kind of a tribe of people that come together to help each other and defend defend ourselves against external enemies that that being the best way to ensure human flourishing so that’s a very simple explanation of conservatism for me it’s about having strong families strong communities and a strong nation and having the courage to teach each generation what their heritage is what the civilization is founded on so that it can be extended into the future and in terms of economics I mean I think you know politics gets so hung up on economics but actually economics and culture are two sides of the same coin do you believe that place matters well if you believe that your place matters and that you each place has a distinctive identity and that you have a loyalty to your own place then it matters whether or not your local economy is doing well and it matters whether or not you have industry that people can work in. And I think the problem with liberal economics, I would say, because both people on the right and left have adhered to it over the last 40, 50 years, it’s basically based on debt. It’s basically based on the idea that we’ll get things as cheap as we can. And if we can’t get them, we’ll print money. And that’s why we’ve got record inflation. That’s why our house prices are really, really high, because we’ve essentially.

[15:36] Central banks across the world have just printed money. Now, unfortunately, the whole establishment agrees with that way of doing economics i think it’s conservative i don’t think it’s left wing i don’t think it’s right thing right wing it’s a very modern uh way of of approaching the economy so um you know i would be very much more down there actually we should on you know bring back.

[15:57] Strong economics to our own country exactly what jd vance is planning to do in america that would be my kind of conservatism but it’s definitely not a neoliberal one yeah that’s really interesting um we could get lost in that entirely but we’re going to talk about some social issue stuff but yeah am i am i allowed to divert the conversation to have a little focus on an issue that’s very close to my heart is that is that permitted graham is that to do with teaching or is that something else no it’s certainly to do with teaching okay we’re going to get on to teach i just had one little question which was just just because people would be interested to know your take Miriam that view you’ve just articulated really clearly and, I was quite interested by it, is that helped by many people in the Conservative Party or MPs no well maybe in the party not in Parliament I think I think, In 2019, in the big realignment election, let’s call it, we saw a glimpse from Boris Johnson, actually, and others of starting to understand the disenchantment of ordinary working class voters, which was that this liberal dream of global economics had not worked for them. The steelworks has closed down.

[17:17] Working class men can’t get good jobs anymore. It feels like our national identity is being eroded. And that’s something that’s incredibly important to people who don’t have any other way of getting status. Having a sense of being British is a really important foundation. And Boris spoke to that. He instinctively understood what it meant to be left behind. You know, he used these terms like leveling up that the mainstream media mocked, but that really resonated with people who felt like they’d been left behind by globalism. But of course, the Conservative Party after that forgot to lean into those sentiments that got them elected. But what Trump has done is very much lean into those sentiments to express exactly what those blue-collar workers are feeling in terms of being left behind economically.

[18:08] And it’s won him the election. And what we’ve seen in America is that the conservative movement, the Republican Party, has now been completely taken over by what I would call the post-liberals, people who are interested, again, in the nation state, in prioritising their own people over other countries. And that is a journey that the Conservative Party in the UK half made in 2019, but has then rode back on and understandably then lost in the 2024 election. Do they have the guts to go full throttle, though? And do you think Kemi would be the one to take them there?

[18:46] I don’t know. I think because, as I said, a lot of the MPs in Parliament are what I would call liberals. And that’s a perfectly sound political position to hold. And it has a long history. Liberalism has a long history. But I don’t think that it can compete with Farage’s Reform Party amongst that base of voters that I’ve just spoken about. Because they, you know, it’s very clear now from the polls and focus groups and elections what that group of voters want, which is economic and cultural security. And unfortunately, that is the exact thing that liberalism has eroded. So if Kemi-Badenhock can bring the Conservative Party back into that space of being conservative and being able to express what those voters are looking for, then yes, I think there’s potentially hope. But I think there’s a long way to go. And I think a lot of conservatives haven’t really woken up yet to the global trends in politics, well, the Western trends in politics, because of course, we’re seeing this. It’s not just in America. You know, this is happening across Europe. German government’s collapsed today.

[20:00] It’s what’s coming in Germany. You could sense that in the biography, to be honest, The Unleashed, that with Boris Johnson, he completely understood the left behind thing and worked it well for Brexit and for other things, but perhaps wasn’t either able or willing to follow that through logically to the fact that it does end up, you need to be selfish in a sense, and you need to be slightly less of an internationalist who pleases everybody internationally and never has tariffs.

[20:31] Exactly. And this is, I think, this is what gives Christians moral problems is as Christians, obviously we are taught to be selfless and to sacrifice for our neighbours, be generous. And of course that is absolutely right. And that is certainly what Jesus is saying to individuals about loving your neighbour and about giving and all those things.

[20:54] But we also, the Bible is clear that we should… Carry our own load and that we should take responsibility for the things that God has given us responsibility for. Now, just because I love my own children more than I love anybody else’s children, and just because I choose to provide for them first before feeding any other children doesn’t make me selfish. That’s my responsibility.

[21:14] I am their mother. They have no other mother. If me and my husband don’t look after them, nobody will. And I think the same applies to a nation. A government’s first responsibility is to look after its own citizens it’s not saying that citizens in other countries are somehow worthless it’s saying that this is our responsibility and actually if everybody takes responsibility for their own lives however small that is or however great that is then actually everybody get looked after and i don’t think there is a moral conflict between being individually self-sacrificial and taking responsibility for the people the things the tasks that we have and nobody else has and that’s why i believe in in the nation again you know our first loyalty is to god but i think you know jesus talks about the nations the nation is fundamentally a biblical concept you know god created the nation of israel gave them an identity and it was an exclusive identity um and it wasn’t that you don’t have to think anybody else is less valuable but just it’s your responsibility is to your own people um and when you get a situation where uh we are buying goods from china and building the Chinese economy, whilst destroying our own steel industry, we can no longer make steel, not only the loss of jobs, but the loss of security. I don’t think that is particularly moral.

[22:32] So, you know, I think as Christians, we need to kind of rethink what are governments for, what are individuals for?

[22:38] They don’t necessarily have the same roles. And I think there’s something to be said about the US in that, although evangelicalism has a slightly different nuance there um there are many christians who or many candidates or ride on the kind of the christian tickets and are generally more aligned with republican party it’s not so clear-cut in the uk though is it i think it’s a lot more um divergent there’s a lot but there’s also a different posture i think towards politics in the uk in that church leaders are often very squeamish yeah even church members are very squeamish about talking political things um may not be the the same case online but certainly face to face where perhaps these conversations could be conducted more constructively it seems to be a bit of a no-no yeah what what would you say then about encouraging christians to get engaged in politics why should they get involved whether they necessarily agree with all of your viewpoints or not why are we squeamish and what are the big issues that you think the church should be talking about more.

[23:51] Well, I think we’re squeamish because we don’t fundamentally want to disagree with people that we love and like. And I think that is a good sentiment.

[24:00] I don’t think vicars from the poll pit should be telling people how to vote. Absolutely not. I don’t actually think they should reveal how they vote because they’re in a position of influence. I don’t think that means they shouldn’t tackle topics like, you know, what does the Bible say about abortion or something like that. I don’t think it means they shouldn’t tackle these theological topics. They should. and they are too squeamish we are too squeamish about that sometimes but i do think that which party you vote for i don’t think that is necessarily a reason that christians should fall out it really isn’t because you know i’ve voted for every political party there is in the last uh 25 years um and you know that’s a matter of personal choice i think some people sometimes christians get hung up between their theology and you know their own culture and politics and sometimes they say that they’re voting for this particular political party for theological reasons whereas actually it’s probably not not that deep at all um but i i think the problem is that we have become a more polarized society because this whole idea of a homogenous normative culture of christian values has broken down in the last since the second world war and now i’m not saying there was some golden era in the UK where everybody was a Bible-believing Christian? Of course not.

[25:20] You know, yeah, lots of people did go to church, much more than they do now. Well, that doesn’t necessarily meant people had personal faith, but there were societal and cultural norms that pretty much everybody subscribed to. And therefore, political differences were reduced to things like.

[25:37] You know, well, should we be, you know, should we have trade tariffs? You know, should we ban gin on the streets of London? And you don’t necessarily have to fall out with somebody because your whole worldview is different over those two things. Whereas now, actually, the clash between left and right really is a fundamental difference of worldview, because we’ve got progressivism on one hand, which, you know, I would say is very much, very much diverges from the foundations of our culture and their more conservative views on the other side. So I think people are genuinely afraid of falling out. Many people did fall out over Brexit, for example. Christians fell out over Brexit. But I suppose what I would encourage Christians to do is to really read and study these things. Because it’s so, you know, we live in a world of mass media where there’s just so much information. It’s very easy to go down one particular viewpoint without really understanding where it comes from. So I would give the example of the gender stuff as one. On the face of it, as Christians, we’re told to be kind. And the idea for modern Christians in the modern liberal world of coming out and saying, no, it’s morally wrong.

[26:48] To tell a child that they can change gender. It’s morally wrong to say to a child who thinks that they’re a girl, not a boy, no, you’re wrong. You’re actually a boy. Now, there are some Christians who have subscribed to gender ideology on the basis of kindness. And you could look at this. It is the same reason why the Church of England is going down the route they are on marriage. It feels kind. But actually, it is being kind, just telling people what they want to hear. Is that what the Bible says or actually is it the truth that sets us free and therefore what is the truth? So I think Christians, like anybody, need to read up on these issues, be sure of what they think, be convinced that it is not in conflict with the Bible and go from there. But I suppose one thing I would say to Christians is that almost all politicians I know from any political party are in it for the right reasons. They might profoundly disagree. But what’s really, really unhelpful as a Christian politician, as a Christian in public life, is when Christians come out and say, that’s not a Christian point of view, or you’re not a Christian, or how can you say you follow Jesus if you also voted for X, Y, Z? And that’s, I think we need to be generous to other Christians and say, I might disagree with you, but I believe that you’re doing this from a place of believing that you’re obedient.

[28:10] And, you know, how do we know who’s right and wrong? So I think that would be my advice to Christians. That’s really refreshing.

[28:17] That’s a very refreshing approach. I wonder, am I allowed now to make this little segue? Because Miriam mentioned gender ideology, gender identity. And so obviously I work for the Association of Christian Teachers and one of your kind of most notable achievements about the work that you did when you were in parliament was drawing attention to ideological materials relationships and sex education materials in schools which is a matter close to to many Christian teachers hearts I wonder could you just explain a little bit you’ve got a background in teaching what was your experience like in education and then what led you to pursue the course of action that you did when you called for this um this public in this inquiry into these relationships and sex education materials um well when I I was in teaching I think I took a career break in 2012 and then haven’t yes 2012 2013 I haven’t taught again since so it it, The educational landscape has changed a lot since then. And some of the aspects of political correctness, if you like, had started to come into schools back then, but nowhere near compared to the changes that we’ve seen since then. Of course, that coincides with the rise of social media and a lot of ideas have spread very quickly because of that. But when I, I do remember before I was elected.

[29:43] Coming to hear anecdotally about instances amongst people we knew of children who had decided to change gender and being told at school that that was the right thing to do or counselled by the school councillor and seeing the damage that that had done to some families. But I assumed that this was highly unusual.

[30:02] Sheffield, as I said, is a very radically left-wing place. at least I assumed this was just kind of unique to Sheffield. But when I became an MP and I started working on education issues, people started writing to me from all over the country about what was happening to their children. And I became involved with a number of different support groups of parents who have the most heartbreaking stories of what’s happened to their children. And often it started with a teacher or somebody coming into school and celebrating the fact that, as they said it, that some people are born in the wrong bodies and you can choose to be a different gender. And then the next step, anybody who refuses to acknowledge that you’re a different gender is then a bigot. And even meeting some parents who’ve been arrested or referred to social services for refusing to affirm their child in their new gender. And obviously this is a huge safeguarding disaster.

[31:03] For so many reasons. You know, any attempt to separate a child from their parents, any attempt to talk to a child about sexual matters, you know, these are all safeguarding red flags, but also fundamentally safeguarding that undermining truth to children is a really serious issue. And telling a child that there are more than two sexes, when from a biological point of view, is absolutely ridiculous. This idea that somebody has an innate gender identity, that is made up.

[31:32] How do I know what it feels like to be a woman? Because I don’t know what it feels like to you to be a woman. I just know what it feels like to be me.

[31:41] And getting confused between biological sex and natural personality variations. And I think as a Christian, Jesus reserves his most serious judgment on people who lead children astray. And he said that it’s better to have a millstone tied around your neck, be thrown into the sea, than to lead one of these little ones astray. And the idea that our entire establishment, well not our entire establishment, elements of our institutions are collaborating in this leading of children astray, leading to children being mutilated and made infertile for life leading to the breakdown of families and all sorts of abuse. It’s just so morally wrong that I think all of us have got, as Christians and adults, have a duty to stand up against it, whatever the social cost. Most people don’t believe that there are 72 genders, but we’ve had this.

[32:34] Emperor’s new clothes phenomenon which is just a true tale of human nature that it’s very difficult to go against the crowd if there’s a social cost to it and of course that’s what there is and you’ll know this from education lizzie particularly people working in schools and universities the social cost of challenging this ideology is huge and that’s why so many people um haven’t done it but i had a very privileged position in parliament where mps have this um protection called parliamentary privilege where you can say anything you want in the chamber of the house of commons and nobody can sue you and i you know very only 650 people at one time have that privilege

[33:10] so i felt very strongly that it was my responsibility to use.

[33:13] That on behalf of people who can’t speak up for all sorts of reasons without losing their job or their livelihood or being sued so you know i i tried to use that platform to represent the parents and the children that had um spoken to me and i think you what’s been really interesting about that debate it’s moved on so much yeah in just three or four years and what’s been so key is people from the left feminists from the left like jk rowling being brave and it’s much harder for people on the left to speak about these issues they face much more social costs than people on the right um and but the collaboration of people on the left and you know more traditional conservatives like me um it’s been incredible what we’ve seen um in this country in our mainstream media there’s still a lot left to be done but we certainly have free speech on this issue now which is a big change to just a few years ago yeah yeah Lizzie and I were in um a briefing just recently uh which was probably half Christians um so it was interesting that the rest of the group were people I can’t name but anyway people that were interested in the issue and campaigning on the issue who weren’t Christians uh or not Christians to my knowledge, So that was interesting. That was to do with conversion therapy.

[34:27] Ban or potential conversion therapy ban and how best to approach it. I think though at a popular level it hasn’t quite seeped through and obviously we have views about sexual ethics as well and Christian marriage and so on and I don’t think if there is a sense of winning and losing I don’t think we’re winning the battle on that front in that that’s kind of landed as a kind of well that’s you know that is totally acceptable and no one should ever critique that whereas I think with transgender there is more it’s up for debate people realize it’s incoherent and i guess my prayer is that as that kind of explodes it kind of might even feed back to the fact that they’re all interconnected actually because they’re all to do with doing the wrong things with your body basically that it wasn’t designed to do um so yeah yes oh this idea that human beings are fungible and that so yes you’re right they’re all interconnected and of course in some ways um And some of this started with more extreme forms of feminism, with women saying that there’s no difference between men and women. Of course, men and women should be treated equally and have equal protections under the law, but they’re not the same. And so the feminists in the 1980s were saying that men and women are the same and are regretting that because certain men have now said, fine, I’ll be a woman.

[35:44] So, yes, you’re right. These are interconnected. But I think the really interesting thing about the trans debate is that it smacks you in the face in the way that the other ones don’t because that famous image of the American swimmer, I can’t remember his name now, six foot four, two tiny little girls who he’d beaten in a race, or that Scottish rapist in a woman’s prison. Those photos say more than a thousand words. And even if you’ve never really thought about this very deeply, it’s… Looking at those photos makes you realise that it’s just wrong. Whereas those other debates, because our culture has been going down that route for so long, it’s very difficult to think objectively about them. But I think this is why I do think that at the moment in our current culture.

[36:34] Children should not be taught about sexual ethics in schools because there is no consensus. We are a multicultural society and with people for all sorts of views of what constitutes a good and a bad sexual relationship or what’s you know whether abortion is right or wrong whether contraception is right or wrong there is no consensus view and therefore anything a school teaches in this is by its nature political you know it’s not political to teach two plus two is four because that is the consensus understanding it is now political to teach anything about sexual ethics whether that’s christian not christian atheist you know it is contentious and so in a multicultural um multi-faith country i don’t think it’s right anymore for schools representing the state to teach about sexual ethics essentially is what rse is yeah so can i sorry do you mind if i just put in that the um so obviously under the last parliament there was some um draft guidance that was released for schools on teaching RSC and also on how to deal with gender questioning children. Would you say then that even that guidance didn’t go far enough? Because I know there have been critical voices.

[37:54] About that suggesting that actually it just needs to be completely struck off curriculum altogether, would you be in that camp then because my teachers really welcomed how kind of small c conservative this was yes the age restrictions and at act we were broadly happy with what the previous government um delivered no i think it was a a good step forward absolutely and i don’t think were ever going to win these battles comprehensively or in one stage so I think it was a real step forward and it got people thinking about that some of these things were not appropriate for children’s age and stage certainly drew a line in the sand about whether or not gender ideology was a respectable viewpoint and so I yes absolutely they were a big step forward and it’s it’s it’s you know, very disappointing that the new government has overridden those, although very predictable.

[38:51] I think with the gender questioning guidance, yes, that was an improvement. But I think the problem with it was that it didn’t take the use of cross-sex pronouns seriously enough. Now, I think some people thought that the pronouns was the icing on the cake. So, okay, as long as you don’t let children actually change sex or actually have medication or you actively hide it from parents it doesn’t really matter whether you call them he or she and you might as well do what they ask well I I would actually see that the other way around because language is is the great enabler of everything else and and if you call a boy she then you are you are proliferating this lie that you can then change sex and that’s very dangerous in front of children to again it’s the emperor’s new clothes thing everybody knows it’s a boy so why are you saying her and then that decreases the child’s authority in the adult and then you erode collective adult authority which is again a really really bad thing for children so i actually think that the language is the key to this um and then everything else flows from it but nevertheless it was an important step forward um and again it’s very disappointing that the current labor government have um have.

[40:04] Jettisoned it yeah did you miriam get any abuse ever for your views or people nasty to you in person or on social media or not so much on in person well with the odd exception but yes definitely on social media and in the mainstream media i mean the guardian uh well i quite like when the guardian are now actually but um yeah the guardian are very nice about me um but um yeah i think what.

[40:33] You completely expect a fight over these issues. They’re so contentious. There are people who are very invested in it on both sides. And it was quite a many times viewed clip of the former Labour MP, Lloyd Russell Moyle, shouting at me in the House of Commons. And that made great drama. And actually, it was very helpful because it perfectly illustrated the problem of men not letting women speak about their experience of single-sex spaces so it was very helpful but um I think what surprised me more is on other issues where the attack has really come so particularly the issue of whether.

[41:15] Or not uh women mothers should be able to choose to look after their own children the first two or three years of life um and that has actually proved to be the most controversial bizarrely debate that I have been involved in and what was interesting about that is that the attack came from the right as much as the left um so I think if you’re a conservative politician you expect the likes of the Guardian and Observer to not like you very much um but.

[41:44] When publications like the Times are so critical of what is basic conservative thinking which is you know mother and baby have a very strong bond it’s a good idea not to break that um that i did find that very surprising actually so you wouldn’t be super in favor of preschool you know well from sort of nought to two funding no i’m not and i was absolutely opposed and devastated actually when the last government introduced funding for nine month olds to be separated from their mothers for 30 hours a day now there is a separate issue of can families survive on one income which to the answer to that is no not anymore and that is a massive and detrimental change but the problem is that families can’t survive on one income not that little children should be in nursery care from a very young age I think we just have to look at the science in this and our own common sense which is that a nine-month-old is not the same as a three-year-old and there is plenty of evidence that actually good preschool for three-year-olds for you know 15 to 30 hours a week can be beneficial absolutely is beneficial helps them to prepare for school as long as it’s you know good quality they have good relationships everything like that it’s good but nine months old are not the same as three three years old and all the evidence we have suggests that high levels of institutional care for under twos is detrimental.

[43:08] And that’s what the evidence and it’s obvious really because for the first year or two of a child’s life, its mother or its primary carer is everything. And being separated from the primary carer can be a grief. And you know, you can read, um.

[43:24] Experts like Erica Commissar on this there’s a lot of evidence now for attachment theory and and of course it’s what most women don’t actually want to be separated from their infants for long periods of time it’s the preference of most women to spend more time at home with their children when their children are young now that doesn’t mean women never ever want to go back to work actually they do absolutely but it’s just those those first two or three years that are so important and and you know I do wonder and certainly this is a theory that somebody like Erika Commissar would put forward if the huge rise we’ve seen in things like ADHD and behavioral problems aren’t at least in part a result of putting children in institutional care before they’re ready and separating them from their mother and then having them in context where they’re competing with other children for adult attention um I just you know I think fundamentally as a conservative and as a scientist it’s a bad idea um but we’re so wedded to our economic model of more GDP, more GDP, or more GDP, that actually the child’s interest and even the mother’s interest now comes secondary to whether or not there’s an extra body in the workplace.

[44:30] Another issue, sorry, I just wanted to segue off that again. The other issue you’ve talked quite a lot about in recent months, Miriam, is that of fertility. And of course it hit the news this week, or was it last week, that for the first time and our fertility rate has fallen below death rate.

[44:54] And I know you’ve had the kind of the backlash against raising this, although this is something that is starting to hit mainstream media rather than be one of those kind of niche, slightly more kind of odd right-wing, ultra right-wing. So why is that? Is there any particular biblical mandate on that kind of issue? I mean, because I think for many Christians, that would be quite hard.

[45:18] Well, one of the first commands in Genesis is to go and fill and subdue the earth. If that’s not a mandate to have children i i don’t know what is and um you know the bible is full of references to children and actually that a sign of being blessed in old testament terms was having lots of children um that’s certainly very clear from this it’s what people pray for it’s what they want that fertility was the sign of success because of course that is what enables you to pass on values and your faith to the next generation. And I think, you know, the world has obviously changed a lot since, you know, the Jews of the Old Testament. But nevertheless, God hasn’t changed. And having children is and remains one of the biggest blessings that there is in life. And it’s our connection with the next generation. And I think actually attack on fertility in terms of, and so by fertility, what I’m talking about is how many children the average woman has, not are people physically able to conceive. Obviously, some people struggle biologically with fertility. That’s a different issue. We’re talking about how many babies does the country or the world have. And I think actually the attack on fertility, this idea that children are a choice, not a blessing.

[46:34] That children are a burden, not a blessing, which is a very modern idea, or that you should have a child only if you can afford it, a bit like you should only buy a Porsche if you can afford to maintain it. This privatization of the family, of children as a personal choice, not a civilization or community blessing, I think is very contrary to what the Bible says. And you know i think there will always be people who can’t or don’t want to have children and that’s you know absolutely to be expected and respected um but certainly in the past most people did think that having children was the right thing to do for their own security for their own joy and for the good of their community and their nation and what’s really interesting is the only country in the West now with an above replacement birth rate is Israel.

[47:24] And it isn’t just because of the Orthodox Jewish community. Secular Jews also have three or more children on average. And you’ve got to wonder if that’s because they have this sense of duty to their nation to have more children in order to keep the nation going, which is obviously something that in the West we’ve very much lost. So if you think about the consequences of not having children, or not having enough children, they’re absolutely catastrophic because you need about one baby for every 50-year-old in order to have a stable population. So you’ve got enough people coming into the workplace to pay for those who retire. And yet we’re now about 200,000 babies short every year just for that basic population stability.

[48:08] And the reason that we are in so much debt as a country, the reason we have high taxes, the reason we’ve had inflation is because we don’t have enough workers in the workplace to support the people.

[48:18] Who are retired so from a basic economic perspective it’s very difficult to see how our economy as it is will survive without more babies um but from a biological perspective you know the most natural thing to want to do is to reproduce it’s what we see in the whole of the animal kingdom and the fact that now lots of people don’t want to or can’t um is a question that we should be asking why that why that’s yeah it’s also related i think to abandoning the idea of committed relationship of marriage in young life so people get married later and they want to pursue a career for a good decade before that’s certainly true in in many countries in the west but this is now a global phenomenon and there are only by the end of this century there will only be three countries in the whole world that have an above replacement birth rate and what’s really odd is in countries like south korea where they do have a high marriage rate and very very little birth outside of marriage they’re still having they’ve still got a collapsed birth rate so there’s something culture you’re you’re right you know the biggest indicator of fertility in the west is do you get married and at what age do you get married that’s absolutely true but this is now a global phenomenon that makes you think there’s something cultural going on um that’s what’s happening in south korea they’re the birth rate is the fertility rate is 0.7 children i mean And Korea is probably finished. South Korea is probably finished as a nation because you cannot come back from that.

[49:44] I think 100 people in Korea today are only going to have 16 great-grandchildren between them or something like that.

[49:50] Are they thinking, I need to pursue my career and children are inconvenienced? Or are they worried about global population growth? No, they’re not worried about global population. So South Korea, so how have they gotten into this mess? I mean, there’s a number of reasons. Firstly, they are very, very low immigration. They don’t like immigration, a bit like Japan. So they’ve prioritised what you might call ethnic continuity over population dynamism. And, you know, I would say that whilst high levels of immigration have masked Britain’s problem in this area, it won’t do for much longer because nowhere is going to have spare young people soon. So even if you did support mass immigration politically, it’s not going to happen in the future.

[50:33] But also in South Korea they have quite a difference in the number of men and women because of sex selective abortions so there aren’t enough young women to go around they also have quite gender unequal so although women do have careers and earn a lot of money they’re still expected to do everything domestic so that’s not a good combination, um and they have this very um this culture of achievement so your parents will only have one child so they can put every single resource they have into that child you know private education music lessons all that kind of stuff um and it’s the same in it’s similar in in china who also has a collapsing birth rate so there’s no one answer as to why you know every culture country has different context um and but what’s so fascinating is now apart from a handful of countries in sub-Saharan Africa no matter how rich or poor all country is now and birth rates are falling falling rapidly which is a really interesting theological uh question as well as a economic one right what I’m going to do I’m going to Lizzie you can throw one more teacher question in if you have one and then I’m going to ask Miriam some some sort of wrap-up questions to do great because we are probably getting towards the end of our time Miriam’s been very generous.

[51:51] I guess I would just say, you know, you’ve had a lot of experience looking into the state of education in the UK. You know, your time on the Education Select Committee, your work revealing the RSC debacle. What are your hopes and prayers for the future of education in our country? We’re going to be doing, or the government is doing, a massive curriculum dissection.

[52:20] And uh what what do you hope and pray will come out of that what are your fears but also what are your hopes well i’m not very optimistic about the government’s curriculum review because i was reading the paper this morning clearly there’s a political motivation to move away from knowledge into what people would call well-being which i think is a big mistake the whole point of education is to teach knowledge it’s up to children what they then do with it but um you know again teaching something like well-being is just there is no what is well-being nobody’s an expert in well-being there is no knowledge base in well-being and therefore what are you actually teaching children and why so i’m not optimistic is that what you’re thinking are you thinking it could be a bit of a trojan horse well absolutely but it’s also a dumbing down and i do think that yeah you know we certainly shouldn’t have a uh an education system that.

[53:14] Um values the academic above all else absolutely not but we do we should be teaching children actual knowledge um that they can then use later in life rather than um concepts political ideas well-being that is just a fad and we will look back on in 50 years time and and think that it was a waste of time um so what i would really love to see in education is more uh diversification into the practical, technical and vocational from the age of 14. Because it struck me as a teacher and now as a mother that it’s very clear by the age of 13 or 14, you know, on the cusp of adulthood, that it’s very clear where children’s talents and interests lie. And for some, that will be academic, that they are our future researchers, lecturers, teachers. But for some, it’d be very clear that their talents and their ambitions lie in learning vocational skills, in becoming a plumber, in becoming a bricklayer, becoming a hairdresser or learning to manage a business. And it seems to me insane that we expect particularly teenage boys to sit through another four years of formal education when they clearly don’t want to do it and could actually be earning money and taking responsibility elsewhere. And I think one of the biggest problems we’ve got in education at the moment is that it only values the academic and those paper qualifications.

[54:43] And that’s what’s leaving so many children behind. And it’s causing big problems for our economy because we have a shortage of plumbers and welders and engineers and far too many graduates in degrees that aren’t actually worth anything and haven’t taught any skills and have just given somebody debt and expectation that can’t be messed. So I’m really interested in what Andy Burnham’s doing in Manchester with this Manchester Baccalaureate.

[55:10] Where they do have this kind of diversification from the age of 14, which is what they do in a lot of European countries. And I think if we did something like that, teach a classical curriculum up to the age of 14, maths, science, English, history, a basic grounding in the kind of knowledge you need for life and to understand what our heritage is. But then allow much more choice and to give equal status to the different roots after 14. I think it’d be transformative for boys, particularly who are biologically ready at the age of 14 or 15 to go out and learn how to be a man rather than to sit in a classroom and be told, you know, a few theories for the next few years. So that would I would think that would transform our education system for kids, especially poorer children. That’s really interesting. You know, we could go on for quite a lot longer. But we haven’t even talked about social media and smartphones and all those kind of issues, which I know you also have views on. But we haven’t got time for that. What I would say is you sound to me like someone who should be heard.

[56:15] And so what are you doing to kind of, I don’t know, to help inform the church?

[56:20] But also, I know you’re doing some work with GB News and perhaps in other places. But are you going to go back into politics? What do you think you should be doing now with this kind of accumulated knowledge and experience that you’ve got? How are you going to use it? Well, I’ve been incredibly blessed because obviously I lost my job very publicly in July. But yeah, I’m now working for GB News. I’ll be doing four or five shows a week. And I suppose what I hadn’t appreciated before is how much influence presenters have on the programme. So we do get to help decide what topics are covered and how they’re covered. So GB News is going from strength to strength in terms of viewership, and regularly beating the BBC and Sky. So it is a really interesting platform that I’m really excited about being part of. It’s really fun learning a new skill. It’s totally different presenting to being interviewed. It’s a lot more nerve wracking. You’ve obviously got, you’re responsible for a lot more. But it’s an amazing opportunity to kind of keep pushing into some of the issues that I’ve got to know a little bit about over the last few years. And I’m also working for the Centre for Social Justice, which is a think tank that Ian Duncan Smith set up 20 years ago now actually a leading a project on about boys and men and young men and how we can help them to have a better start in life really so I’ve been incredibly fortunate that I have.

[57:43] Still have the opportunity to work on and hopefully give a platform to some of these issues and I’m involved with the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship which is the, movement the conference that started last year with John Peterson that’s coming again in February so I’m involved with that, and I’m kind of writing regularly for the Telegraph and the critic and things so I’ve been very fortunate to keep a platform and I feel that’s the right thing to do for now I don’t know about going back into politics I’m not sure, I don’t hopefully have to make that decision right now so yeah we’ll see, But I’ve got enough to do. Yeah, no, it sounds like it. Yeah. I’ve been on GB News quite often, and I would say they’re one of the nicest shows to ever go on.

[58:27] Because it’s not like they actually agree with Christians all the time. I’ve been interviewed by a number of people who clearly are Christians, and some of them would have a completely different moral view to me. But they’re pretty sympathetic and even-handed, I would say. Yeah. That’s been my experience. I wouldn’t say they’re entirely soft. They’re not like going on a Christian show where they just keep following you softballs. Yeah, you get a fair hearing. Yeah, I would say. And also, I’ve found everybody very kind and nice and just relaxed to work with, which I think has been really, you know, there’s a fun feel there, which is… Yeah, it obviously gets a bit of a bad rap because it’s, I don’t know, it’s considered… It gets a bad rap in the mainstream media, but as we’ve seen in America, the mainstream media is not the future. Well, indeed, but I’ve observed Christians who, oh I say oh you know I’ve got an interview on GB News you know tomorrow morning or whatever and certain Christians would think oh that’s brilliant another set of Christians would think oh that’s terrible what are you doing there for yeah um I think that’s an example of what I was saying earlier about I think sometimes Christians think that their political views or impulses are because of their faith but actually they’re just because of their culture like anybody else and you’ll get churches full of people who voted Remain in 2016 and churches full of people who voted Brexit and And actually it’s much more to do with their local culture than it is to do with theology. Yeah. Last question then. Anything particularly we could pray for you?

[59:48] Our listeners could pray if they think of you. And also, how can we pray for Christians in Parliament? Christians, you know, your MPs. I think, yeah, pray for Christians in public life generally, I think for protection, physical and spiritual, for collaboration. So it’s an amazing thing to work with other Christians. I really loved that aspect of Parliament. People from all different spiritual backgrounds, you know, Catholics,

[1:00:19] Protestants, Evangelical, you know, that is a really wonderful thing. So pray for better connections especially between parties as well there is some cross party um working but it’d be amazing if there was more um and then i think for courage really because um you know it is hard to it can be hard to speak up on some of these issues um and there are some amazing organizations out there that resource christians in parliament like um the christian institute for example um so yeah there are those resources but i suppose yeah courage to speak up and wisdom to know when and what to say um and then practical encouragement i mean it’s so.

[1:01:01] It’s really really helpful when you get cards and emails from christians saying i’m praying for you thanks for standing up you know you can’t it sounds like a small thing but actually it’s really meaningful um so i know you know i’m terrible i always think i should send a card to this person and i never get around to it i’m terrible at doing this but it is so meaningful when people do do it so if you know a christian politician or you just write to them in parliament it does make a really big difference um and then for me personally just i suppose um you know just the usual that i would god would show me what he wants me to do next and that i would be faithful to that um yeah and for your family and my family yeah brilliant thank you miriam it’s been an absolute pleasure to have you here with us thank you thank you no worries lovely to speak to you thanks thank you so much for listening to affinity talks gospel podcast affinity is a network of evangelical churches and christian organizations working together sharing stories in order to encourage and equip God’s people to preach and live the gospel in this generation.

[1:02:18] If you’re interested in supporting this ministry, we’d love you to join us. Just head over to affinity.org.uk forward slash join to find out more. And we look forward to catching up with you on the next episode of Affinity Talks Gospel.