Keeping the faith

Today, his book, looking at how religion coloured the Blair premiership, is published. He talks to Chris Lloyd about faith, socialism and his own beliefs.

ON a table in a corner of John Burton’s living room is a framed photograph of him and his wife, Lily, shaking hands with Bill Clinton.

On the table in the opposite corner is a Bible and a prayer book.

“It was Alastair Campbell who said ‘We don’t do God’ – but we did. Tony did God all the time,”

says Mr Burton.

Outside the window is Trimdon’s 12th Century church of St Mary Magdalene which Mr Burton has attended as boy and man. It was where, after prayers one fateful September Sunday in 1997, Tony Blair uttered the immortal words to the world’s TV cameras about the newly-deceased Diana being “the People’s Princess”.

“That’s God in a wider sense,” continues Mr Burton, whose new book is published today, and looks at how religion coloured Blair’s premiership.

“It wasn’t a Christian thing. In the end, Tony was taking the Bible and the Koran to bed and I know he was on his second time through the Koran when he was still prime minister.

“Religion has played a big part in his life, and it is bound to affect decisions. It affects everything.”

Mr Burton was Blair’s agent throughout his 24 years as Sedgefield MP. He helped him grow from the gauche young barrister kipping in his spare room – Bible by his bedside – into a prime minister with enormous early popularity. But that popularity whittled away as the war in Iraq wore on.

“Tony was always aware of right and wrong, but it wasn’t a Christian thing, more of an overall religious thing,” says Mr Burton. “It didn’t matter whether it was a Christian or Muslim country in difficulty, if he felt that was the right thing to do he would support it.

“That’s the socialist side of it – supporting people who are less well off and in need of help.

The two are tied together.

“I said to him the easiest thing for you to do over Iraq is to do nothing. But he said ‘I can’t do that John, not with all the information from the CIA, MI5, and the French and Russian secret services about weapons of mass destruction – I can’t do nothing’.

“He took the decision in the best interests of the country, but it’s still an agonising decision, sending your young people to war. He knew there would be a stage when it would be sorted out – but he also knew that before we reached that stage, there were going to be casualties.”

Did a firm belief in God make that decision easier? A schoolboy throws a stone through a window and, when asked why, points at his friend and says: “He made me do it.” A prime minister makes an unpopular decision and, when asked why, points to his God and says… “It doesn’t work like that,” says Mr Burton, momentarily exasperated. “‘I’m doing something because God guides me’ – that doesn’t come into it. You live your life according to your faith and you make the right decisions.

God doesn’t come into it – otherwise you’d get all the politicians out of the Cabinet and put the local priest, the archbishops, the chief rabbi and the Muslim and Sikh leaders in and ask them to make the decisions.”

The book, written in conjunction with North-East television journalist Eileen Mc- Cabe, traces how Blair’s faith was vital in the creation of New Labour, in Sedgefield. Old socialism had ruled Durham for decades, and had failed, as the dying coalfield communities showed. Mr Blair’s arrival in 1983 coincided with the area’s need for a different brand of Labour.

“Tony believed socialism dragged people down. It wasn’t aspirational, didn’t attempt to lift people,” says Mr Burton. “He was influenced by those Christian values of wanting people to be better off and so everything we did was about lifting people up: the minimum wage, improving social inclusion, improving hospitals and schools and people’s chances in life.”

It was because of Blair’s religion that he controversially pushed on with creating faith schools, despite what his advisors recommended.

“Faith schools’ results were far better and he felt that had something to do with ethos of the school, the way children and staff interacted with the religious philosophy,” says Mr Burton.

“I thought single-faith schools were divisive – okay, let religion into school, but let the kids of different religions go to the same school.

“I didn’t agree with Tony about those schools, but I can’t disagree that standards in those schools were higher.”

Since leaving power two years ago, Blair has formed a faith foundation to bring the world’s faiths closer together. He became the first world leader to be photographed with US President Barack Obama at a National Prayer Breakfast, and he has converted to Catholicism, the church of his wife, Cherie.

“Tony was a High Church Anglican and always said he didn’t see any reason to change – it was just as well he didn’t, as I can’t see how he would have got on with Ian Paisley as a Catholic,” says Mr Burton.

‘BUT I always felt a bit sorry for him when he went to a Catholic church like St John Fisher in Sedgefield with his family. They went up for communion and, of course, he couldn’t.

“I remember staying at Chequers and we went to the Catholic church at Great Missenden.

I was at the end of the row and Euan, his son, gave me a great nudge in the ribs and said ‘Go on’. I know I’m not supposed to, but I take communion in a Catholic church – I do it in good faith – so I led the family up. Tony couldn’t go. It was ridiculous.”

Mr Burton’s own involvement in the church out of the window started when he joined the choir, aged ten. “All my friends were involved in the church. We went together for choir practice and had a game of football on the green afterwards,”

he says. “That doesn’t happen now.”

He had considered becoming a clergyman, but says: “I’ve always thought practical politics is where I’ve shown my Christianity.”

His wife has been flitting through the living room during the interview, tidying around, bringing coffee and keeping him right. She’s been just as immersed in the church out of the window and now it is helping her in her fight against serious illness.

“I give thanks for every day and for my family,”

she says, momentarily alighting on a cushion.

“I really do. I stay positive and I pray.”

They really do do God, and always have done.

■ We Don’t Do God: Blair’s religious belief and its consequences, by John Burton and Eileen McCabe (Continuum Books, £12.99)