Charlie Falconer, or Baron Falconer of Toroton to give him his full title, is a long time advocate for assisted dying. He has been making such noises ever since his time in government under New Labour and has not stopped making them ever since, even in the Lords. Whilst I deeply disagree with him, I think these are views he is free to proffer and he is perfectly entitled to add his name to the folks arguing for the current assisted dying bill that is presently being voted on in parliament.

Shabana Mahmood – the current UK Justice Secretary – has come out against the proposed assisted dying bill. Mahmood has recently written to her constituents – which, being the MP for Birmingham Ladywood, includes a significant number of Muslim people – expressing her concerns about the bill. I think these are views she is free to proffer and she is perfectly entitled to add her name to the folks arguing against the assisted dying bill that is presently being voted on in parliament.

Those two statements should be broadly uncontroversial. Except, Charlie Falconer thinks otherwise. In an intervention reported by the Guardian:

In response to an intervention from Shabana Mahmood, Charlie Falconer, a Labour peer and ally of Keir Starmer, said the justice secretary had “religious and spiritual reasons” for being opposed to assisted dying.

“I think she’s motivated – and I respect this – by her religious beliefs. They shouldn’t be imposed on everybody else,” Lord Falconer told Sky News.

Let’s just hold up here for a second. Falconer – an advocate for assisted dying – is arguing that his metaphysical assumptions that inform his view are acceptable in the public square whereas Shabana Mahmood’s metaphysical assumptions are not. Apparently he can approach this subject with all his presumptions and opinions that lead to the formation of his particular views entirely untouched, but Shabana Mahmood must hang hers up at the door. Can you see something of a problem here?

I am put in mind of part of Jonathan Leeman’s opening to his book Political Church:

The division between politics and religion, I dare say, is an ideological ploy. Imagine an airport security metal detector standing at the entrance of the public square, which doesn’t screen for metal but for religion. The machine beeps anytime someone walks through it with a supernatural big-G God hiding inside of one of their convictions, but it fails to pick up self-manufactured or socially constructed little-g gods. Into this public square the secularist, the materialist, the Darwinist, the consumerist, the elitist, the chauvinist, and, frankly, the fascist can all enter carring their gods with them, like whittled wooden figures in their pockets. Not so the Christians or Jews [and, likewise, the Muslims]. Their conviction that murder is wrong because all people are made in God’s image might as well be a semiautomatic. What this means, of course, is that the public square is inevitably slanted toward the secularist and materialist. Public conversation is ideologically rigged. The secularist can bring his or her god. I cannot bring mine because his name starts with a capital letter and I didn’t make him up.

But this is precisely the ploy that Charlie Falconer is employing to stop Shabana Mahmood from being able to raise concerns about assisted dying. Because her beliefs are religiously informed (and she has not explicitly said this; Falconer has simply assumed it), her opinion must be cast out. It is inadmissible because, Falconer avers, she has ‘religious and spiritual reasons why she believes completely in the sanctity of life.’ So, presumably, if she arrived at her view of the sanctity of life through entirely non-religious means, her argument – which is exactly the same in practice – would hold, but because it has been informed by her Islamic beliefs, it must be struck from the record. The position is as blatantly biased as it is fatuous.

Even if we concede that religious views ought not to be imposed on everybody – and you can find a reasonable number of religious believers of all persuasions would agree on some level – is that actually what Mahmood is doing? Is her opposition to assisted dying merely the imposition of her religious views on society? I’m not at all convinced that it is. Certainly no more than we might argue the case being advanced for assisted dying is metaphysical atheists and agnostics imposing their religious views on us too. Rather, Mahmood – whether for religious reasons or otherwise – believes in the significance of human life and, having reached that conclusion by whatever means she reached it, is acting in line with that view. Again, one could reach exactly that conclusion using entirely non-religious principles. It seems insane to me that anyone can argue with a straight face that unless the conclusion has been reached by the appropriate means – even if someone agrees with the conclusion having reached it by other means – that conclusion is necessarily unsafe. It makes no sense.

But again, let’s concede for the sake of argument that you might be concerned by the means by which somebody has reached a conclusion. You might be adamant that religious inspired principles ought not to be brought into the public square. You may think it inappropriate to impose religious views (which secularists like Charlie Falconer seem to read as necessarily wrong) on wider society. But, again, is that what Shabana Mahmood is doing? It seems to me she is actually representing the views of a significant number of her constituents. Namely, the many Muslims in Birmingham Ladywood who do think and act in line with (at least some) religiously inspired principles and would have a similar reaction to assisted dying. Is it not entirely legitimate of an MP to represent a significant proportion of their constituents views this way?

Indeed, this is a problem with Falconer’s essential view on the divide between religion and a secular public square. For if everyone has to become a secularist in order to enter the public square, in what way do MPs then function as representatives of the people who elected them when – and I know some will find this hard to believe – a significant proportion of them aren’t secularists? Doesn’t the secularist view of a secular public square kill any sense in which we might have a diverse parliament representing modern Britain? It seems to me, if everybody has to accept the fundamental tenets of secularism, we immediately stop any sense in which a diversity of thought might enter parliament because too many who might be elected may bring other presumptions that inform their politics and ethics which must – according to the secularist – be abandoned at the front door.

The sad reality is this is a bastardised version of the secular public square that I – along with quite a lot of historic nonconformists – ever wanted. The secular public square historically argued for in this country, generally by nonconformity, was not one whereby all forms of religion and religious expression must be expunged from public life. Rather, it was a secular public square whereby one religion – in our case, Anglicanism – would no longer have a monopoly on truth and whose assumptions must first be admitted before any further discussion can take place. Unsurprisingly, then, nonconformists who seek a secular public square – as I do – are no more interested in a secularist theocracy of the kind Charlie Falconer advocates than we were with an historic Anglican one. What we want is a properly secular public square whereby people of all religions and none can bring their presumptions and metaphysics into play – and can freely argue in line with their core beliefs and convictions however they came by them – so that no one religious or non-religious belief system has the monopoly, but all may freely bring their beliefs with them, inevitably representing the beliefs of at least some who elected them, so that all might be actually represented rather than forcing public discourse to be ideologically rigged.

I can get behind that kind of secular public square. Unfortunately, secularists of the Falconer variety seem to do what many religious folks have done before them; assume power and then rig the discussion so that only their metaphysical presumptions prevail. Which is, ironically, what he accused Shabana Mahmood of doing in this debate. Far from imposing her religious beliefs on everyone else, it is Falconer who is seeking to impose his religious beliefs on all. But the saddest thing of all, he doesn’t even realise he’s doing it.