The IMF plays God: Truss and Kwarteng can't serve two masters
The UK government has been told it favours the rich, writes George Pitcher. In doing so, the IMF witnesses to gospel values
It’s a tempting notion that prime minister Liz Truss and her chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng are deliberately throwing it: they know that the next general election is lost and have decided that it’s better to go into opposition with what they consider an “authentic” version of radical Conservatism, than to fight and lose on compromise.
How else, honestly, to explain the electoral suicide that is tax cuts for the richest at a moment of the most serious economic crisis, which invites not only the resurgence of Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party, but the censure of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which isn’t given to officious intervention in developed economies?
On this reading, “Trussonomics” is a form of religious fundamentalism. In her magisterial work of over 20 years ago, The Battle for God, religious intellectual and former nun Karen Armstrong traces the history of fundamentalism in the three Abramic faiths of Judaism, Islam and Christianity and establishes that it grows when their established cultures are threatened.
Radicalising tenets of faith
They turn in on themselves, radicalise the central tenets of their faith and weaponise it in resistance to those they perceive to be threatening it. Fundamentalism develops into an act of self-destruction. And we’ve seen often enough how it can, literally and violently, be suicidal in a theocratic context.
So, in this metaphorical comparison, this is the path on which today’s Conservative Party has set itself. Better to die in an ideological fight for what you think you fundamentally stand for, than to be overrun by an alien culture that acts differently, with alternative customs and rituals.
Hopeless historical ideology
This defence-to-the-death of a hopeless, historical ideological line is tragic not only for those who culturally refuse to evolve, but also naturally for those they harm in doing so. In this context, Cat Jenkins, of Church Action for Tax Justice, writes that fiscal policy that serves the rich at the cost of the poor is (my word) sinful.
She argues this through the gospel parable in Luke of the Rich Man and Lazarus, the latter suffering terribly in this life at the expense of the former, positions which are reversed by God in the Kingdom of Heaven.
Jenkins essentially leads us, I believe, to this Christological question: Who does our wealth enrich? If the answer to that is the already wealthy, then that isn’t good enough; we’re called by gospel imperative to serve the poor. I respect and enjoy that exegesis, though it prompts me to explore it a little further.
Too late
The first thing I’d want to contribute, which is entirely consistent with Jenkins, is that the Rich Man has cause to regret, in God’s eternity, how he failed Lazarus in mortal life, but it’s too late to do anything about it. The import of that is the Kingdom of Heaven is to be started and built in this life and world, in the here and now, rather than viewed as a perfect destination in a hereafter.
Truss is a signed-up Anglican, but it is perhaps harder to recognise in her economic policy the kind of faith-informed mission that accompanied the premierships of Theresa May or Tony Blair. And it’s actually in this disparity of vision that the gospel’s challenge becomes more complicated – and where perhaps I depart from Jenkins.
Plight of the poor
Luke’s gospel is, in summary, principally concerned with the plight of the poor – and not just the economically poor, but the dispossessed and marginalised too. As the author of the book of Acts he develops such themes.
In that context, it’s worth noting that the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus is immediately preceded by the parable of the Unjust Steward. Here, another rich man decides to fire his incompetent financial manager who, out of pride and self-preservation, tells his boss’s debtors to mark down their bills so he has friends who will take him in when he’s destitute.
Instead of condemning his corrupt steward for defrauding him, the rich man commends him for his shrewdness: “Make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth,” he says.
Condoning corruption and fraud
This story, which seems to give Trussonomics the green light, causes huge problems for Christian apologists, not least because it appears to condone corruption and fraud. But there are two points relevant to our issue here. The first is that God isn’t much interested in money but with what you do with it.
So far, so consistent with criticism of our Government. But the other point surely is that Truss and Kwarteng aren’t analogous with the boss so much as with the corrupt steward. They are financially looking after their wealthy friends – perhaps with an eye to being looked after by them when they’re out of a job, which may be sooner rather than later.
Role of the IMF
And the role of their boss (and therefore God)? Step forward the IMF. The rich man in this parable concludes: “You cannot serve God and money.” No, the IMF isn’t divine. But it does say that, in disproportionately favouring high earners, UK government policy “will likely increase inequality”, which arguably witnesses to gospel values.
These are delicate distinctions and we should be careful about holding up one worldly institution as more pious than another. But we’re entitled to identify holiness where we can glimpse it. So is the IMF on the side of the angels in this case? In my view, yes. Should we affirm and follow it as serving the gospel? Ah, that’s the road towards fundamentalism.
George Pitcher is a visiting fellow at the LSE and an Anglican priest
A version of this column appeared on PremierChristianity