‘We don’t do God’ was a famous intervention by Alastair Campbell, press secretary to former Prime Minister Tony Blair, when trying to protect his boss from an interviewer’s questioning about Blair’s Christian beliefs.
That separation of religion and politics is apparently the way the electorate likes things to be, according to a newly-released YouGov survey for the Policy Exchange think-tank. Fieldwork was conducted online on 10-12 March 2011 among 2,407 adult Britons.
Asked which two or three from a list of eleven values they most wanted a political party to reflect, a mere 3% chose religious faith, which came bottom. No more than 5% in any demographic sub-group picked this option, this figure being recorded by Conservative voters in 2010 and residents of the Midlands and Wales.
Economic responsibility topped the scales at 59%, followed by fairness (50%), family values (32%), traditional values (29%), equality (21%), freedom (20%), patriotism (17%), tolerance and diversity (14%), community (12%), and environmentalism (11%).
The data table will be found at:
