Theo Hobson

What does the rise and fall of Russell Brand say about our culture, especially or moral and religious culture? A few different things, I suggest. First, it highlights our deep confusion about sex, and our fear of thinking about it in any serious sense. Brand, who will be sentenced today for raping a fan at his house in 2009 and three sexual assaults, was a test case: what do we think of an outright sexual hedonist? The liberal orthodoxy is that there is absolutely nothing wrong with such an approach to sex, and maybe something good about its honesty. Only Mary Whitehouse-type prudes seek to scorn such self-expression. In relation to sex, it seems that we are scared. We are scared of sounding old-fashioned, moralistic.

There is a big opportunity for one of the parties to show that it understands and values Britain’s Christian tradition. You might reply that Reform has already seized that opportunity. If so, your grasp of Britain’s Christian tradition is shaky. In fact, it is Reform’s clumsy attempt at this that spurs my thoughts. A party that rails against ‘liberalism’ and flirts with Christian nationalism is unlikely to have much understanding of Britain’s Christian tradition. What defines our religious story is the established Church, and the fact that it has developed a strong affinity with liberal values. The Labour party has an awkward relationship with the national Church Last year it became increasingly apparent that Reform was playing the Christian card.

Everyone agrees that social media should be more heavily regulated to protect young people. Everyone is wrong. It should be less regulated to protect young people. Regulation provides a semblance of safety, an illusion of safety. It is better to admit that there is no possibility of safety here. Imagine a dangerous cliff path, from which a couple of children have fallen to their deaths. It would be wrong of the council to make it a bit safer by providing lighting. That would encourage people to go there. The safest thing would be to keep it fully dangerous. Because social media platforms ban nudity and extreme violence, parents drift into assuming that they are safe enough. But what, in this case, does safety mean? The chance of a direct harm befalling a child is small.

Sociology is an academic discipline that I generally steer clear of. It seems as full of trendy guff as Education. But there is a minority report, a subculture that questions progressive orthodoxies. A new book co-written by Jennie Bristow and Ellie Lee called Growing Up in the Culture Wars is in this frail tradition. They offer some excellent insights into what has gone wrong. One insight is that mainstream sociologists have become confused about the idea of normality; it has become seen as an oppressive threat. They acknowledge that there is a healthy sociological tradition of criticising ‘normativity’, meaning the way in which societies reinforce the status quo by presenting it as natural.

It’s the end of term at last. Teachers like me have every right to stick a video on, for their last lessons. A few decades ago, that meant wheeling in the school telly and video, and showing the kids something on tape. My teachers would have a little collection of cassettes for this purpose. Nowadays, with everything online, there’s no need for such a collection. Or is there? The BBC is filling iPlayer with trendy transient stuff and is failing to make core educational stuff available You’d have thought there were lots of good educational documentaries on BBC iPlayer. But in my field, religion, there aren’t. The BBC is filling iPlayer with trendy transient stuff and is failing to make core educational stuff available. There is no general history of Christianity.

Boris Johnson is one, under the merry Tory veneer. Bill and Hillary Clinton were pioneers. Barack Obama is one – he seemed not to be at first – then he seemed happier cutting Netflix deals than trying to inspire a tricky nation. Peter Mandelson is very much one – his comment about being intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich is gliberal holy writ. But Tony Blair is not one – the earnestness wins out. Almost everyone who appears on or runs television or radio is one. The Gliberal can tell you the best vinyl shops in Tokyo and the best restaurants in Bologna. But not the name of their next-door neighbour Gliberals are glib liberals. They are liberals who fail to see that liberalism is a deep and earnest matter, in which the human soul is involved.

Middlemarch, which a Guardian poll of 'experts' has named as the best novel ever, is overrated. I enjoyed reading it when I was seventeen. I probably re-read it in my twenties. Then I grew up. I became a bit more sceptical of the para-religious sentimentalism-on-stilts that defines George Eliot’s ouvre, and this novel in particular. This is a pile of nonsense with a grain of truth in it Of course I was in love with Dorothea Brooke as a teenager. So high-minded, and considerate and so wisely accepting of her misfortunes, and rather pretty too. But nowadays she strikes me as a blue-stocking bore (I far prefer the feisty Gwendolyn from Daniel Deronda (partly thanks to Romola Garai’s portrayal of her). Let’s put it simply.

So Prince William is a good Anglican after all. He has told the Times, through an aide, of his commitment to the Church, on the eve of attending the installation of the new Archbishop of Canterbury. But does he consider himself a Christian believer? The statement awkwardly dances around that question. It leaves the impression that he does not really consider himself a Christian, but knows that he must keep this semi-veiled. We then hear that ‘his relationship with the Church will “evolve” from that of previous monarchs, whose strong faith underpinned their reigns.’ The statement is difficult to analyse because the words are not quite his. They come from an aide; he presumably signed them off, but there is an air of vagueness and deniability in such a not-quite-statement.

I approve of the large Muslim prayer meeting held in Trafalgar Square on Monday. But I would not want such a thing to happen more than once a year. I do not agree with Nick Timothy that it was an 'act of domination'. But I am glad that his comments have caused a debate: we should be thinking about these things without fear of censure. We should admit that public religion is problematic and ponder why. Timothy says that Muslim prayers should be confined to mosques: 'They are not welcome in our public places and shared institutions.' The Prime Minister responded with indignation: various religions are allowed to stage celebrations in Trafalgar Square, so why should Muslims be treated with suspicion?

Is there anything much to say about Sarah Mullally, the Archbishop of Canterbury? It seems that she is a very nice, Christian lady. She used to be Britain’s top nurse. Um, she is a brilliant manager. She is good at washing people’s feet, both for practical and ceremonial purposes. She has an awesome work-ethic. She can show emotion: she cried when telling the Church of England's Synod about the micro-aggressions that female clergy suffer. She seems to embody the Church’s official line on the gay issue: in favour of greater inclusion, but not wanting to change the doctrine of marriage. Would the Church really risk antagonising the liberal majority, and prodding this dormant crisis into life? To help me out I have just read a very brief biography by Tim Wyatt.

Our public morality has two parts. Part A: people are free to do what they want, even if they do things that most people disapprove of, like getting drunk a lot, or sleeping around. Unless you harm others in some tangible way, you can do what you want. This is good, in my opinion. Andy and Mandy are scapegoats. We condemn them with special force, in order to reassert the moral code that unites us Despite this, our culture is not amoral. Part B: we value some forms of life over others. We value people who help others, who are trustworthy, faithful to their spouses – people who are not selfish and greedy. But the second part of our public creed is difficult to articulate. It sounds preachy to say: ‘People should be community-minded, not selfish’.

For quite a while now, intellectual movements have been nebulous things. This started with postmodernism, which everyone was talking about in the 1980s, but no one could quite define. Or maybe it started a bit earlier, with the New Left, a mix of Marxism and any other trendy shiny thing. But at least that was decidedly left. You might suppose sensible mainstream theologians have been calmly refuting such reactionary posturing. If only In our day, it is ‘post-liberalism’. For about fifteen years now, the term has attracted academics and pundits who want to sound edgy. At first, it was the iconoclastic banner of a few theologians and philosophers; then a few think-tank types took notice.

One of the most effective British politicians of recent years is a household name only in the most policy-wonkish of households. I mean Nick Gibb, the schools minister who worked alongside Michael Gove. Gibb kept a lower profile than Gove and so managed to stay in the Department for Education longer, bedding in the reforms that everyone except the odd Marxist lecturer deems highly successful. Let’s have a few more politicians like Gibb: limelight-shunning iconoclasts who leave off grandstanding and quietly fix stuff Gibb has co-written a book that will not do much to lift his obscurity. Reforming Lessons: Why English Schools Have Improved Since 2010 and How This was Achieved is a rather dry affair, low on Westminster gossip and high on graphs.

Please remember not to talk about religion or politics over the turkey this Christmas. It can cause terrible rows. One of the functions of the BBC, especially Radio 4, is to host such discussions, so that we don’t have to. The Moral Maze is still worth a listen, from time to time. This week, some of the panel and some of the guests were half-daring to discuss a profoundly difficult question. Is ethno-nationalism something we should condemn? Or should we be realistic, that it is an inevitable component of politics? We are schooled in the evasion of this question. The evasion is largely benign. For there is a fine line between brave honesty and racism.

So Tommy Robinson is inviting us all to have Christmas with him. The far-right activist has announced that there will be a huge open air carol concert in central London on 13 December, a seasonal Unite the Kingdom rally. The aim, he says, ‘is to put Christ back into Christmas.’ Hmm, isn’t that what thousands of church services already do? Robinson is saying: we should be proud of our national religion. Is he wrong? Yes and no So what is Robinson's motivation for wanting to stage a very large and very public Christmas event? Well, he makes it pretty clear. ‘We shouldn’t have to put this on’, he says. ‘There should be a massive Christmas event put on by our government – did you see Poland’s this year? Did you see the Christmas market switch-on?