Thread by @docrussjackson

#THREAD

May I join the legion of others saying 'who the fuck is Fiona Bruce MP?'

What do we know about the anti-abortion evangelical Christian Bruce?

And as so few voters have even heard of her, how on earth is she the MP with the fourth biggest outside earnings?

https://twitter.com/Haggis_UK/status/1612006439903703040

Following her selection as the Conservative Party candidate for the Congleton constituency in 2010, Bruce denied allegations that she had been chosen following an orchestrated campaign by religious groups sympathetic to her evangelical Christian beliefs.

Bruce is a council member of the Evangelical Alliance - a national alliance & member of the World Evangelical Alliance. Founded in 1846, the activities of the Evangelical Alliance aim to promote evangelical Christian beliefs in government, media & society.
eauk.org/about-us/

Disturbingly, given #RoeVsWade, Bruce describes her priority in Parliament as "defending & fighting for the sanctity of human life".

This 2010 FT article has some fascinating insights into the influence of Christian fundamentalists on Tory Party Policy.

ft.com/content/124005…

Back in 2010, a Conservative MP claimed “They’ve campaigned to change the processes so that they can bus in their voters, stuffing the selection meetings with their people. They don’t outnumber us, but they can out-organise us. They’re taking over the party.”

“They” are evangelical Christians, & the MP was prompted to speak by a meeting a week earlier. The party had held an “open primary” (in which members of the public can vote) to choose a candidate to stand for a safe Tory seat – Congleton, Cheshire – in the 2010 general election.

The two leading names on the ballot were Matt Hancock & Fiona Bruce. Hancock was an economic adviser to the party, Bruce a solicitor who fought valiantly, if unsuccessfully, for a seat in the north-west in the 2005 general election.

The main difference between them was religion: Hancock is secular, Bruce an evangelical Christian. Bruce won easily, taking a majority of the 220 votes in the first round. But a rumour soon spread that most of her votes had come from members of the evangelical New Life church.

According to churchgoers & constituency officials alike, between 40 & 60 of the 220 people voting were parish regulars, & they made their own way to the meeting. Bruce had addressed the church shortly before the selection – but, then, all candidates had been welcome to do so.

Still, the Conservative MP mentioned earlier continued: “You know, the Christians send e-mails to one another asking them to pray for them at selection meetings, but the point of the messages is to make sure that they all know who is standing where and when.”

Back in 2010, @Conservatives were asking what degree of power a few evangelical Christians – only 3% of the party members, according to one poll – would wield. The answer was surprising, & went on to significantly determine the shape & sturdiness of successive Conservative Govts.

As wary as some Tories were of their evangelical brethren, their opinion poll lead just before #GE2010 came in large part on the back of an alliance between secular liberals and a small core of evangelical Christians. Something Tories have been good at hiding from the electorate.

In December 1990, weeks after the internal party coup that toppled Margaret Thatcher, a group of young Christians at Exeter University founded the little known Conservative Christian Fellowship (CCF). Tim Montgomerie was one of the founders.

https://twitter.com/Tom___Scott/status/1224755669703757824?s=20&t=WxhmrnK1CS5LFn9D25RNoA

“It was at a time when Tory MPs had appeared to abandon a moral case for conservatism and become narrowly economic,” said Tim Montgomerie back in 2010. “We hoped an organised Christian group could reignite the party’s compassion.”

In 1992, when he left university, Montgomerie – the son of an army officer – joined the Bank of England. But away from work, he concentrated on running the CCF, and, in 1998, gave up his job to run it full time. The Tory party, meanwhile, was slumping into oblivion.

The @Conservatives had been devastated in the 1997 election. Staff at Conservative Central Office (CCO) recall speculating about what politics would be like “after the Tories”.

CCO came up with “Listening to Britain”, an exercise to reconnect the party to voters.

And as part of a deal with the party, in which he was given a desk and a telephone, Montgomerie started an offshoot, “Listening to Britain’s Churches”. He contacted 300 churches around the country to ask about their concerns.

Through this, Montgomerie claims he realised that the political priorities of church leaders were “much more linked to poverty, debt & drugs than they were about sexuality or bioethics”.

Like many Tories, Montgomerie is staunchly anti-abortion, & had been influenced by US Christian conservativism, but he thought that if Christian Tories were more interested in solving social problems than debating moral flashpoints, the party should respond.

Early on, most of Montgomerie’s important allies were not Christians. He met with Jonathan Sacks Britain’s chief rabbi from 1991 - 2013 (Lord Sacks from 2009, he died in 2020), who helped line up £300,000 funding from Sir Stanley Kalms, a Tory donor.

The only condition (because despite claims to the contrary, "donations" always come with conditions) was that the organisation be non-denominational – & so Renewing One Nation was born, to run alongside the CCF.

powerbase.info/index.php/Rene…

The new group largely recruited from the CCF and continued its policy work on poverty. Within the party, David Willetts, then the Tories’ foremost intellectual, became a helper despite his own agnosticism. The atheist Oliver Letwin, also offered support.

Willetts went on to lead the Centre for Policy Studies. Paul Foot claimed that in 1993 document called The Opportunities for Private Funding in the #NHS, published by the Social Market Foundation & financed by BUPA, Willetts provided the "intellectual thrust" for PFIs in the NHS.

Daniel Finkelstein, then head of party policy, who was executive editor at The Times in 2010, backed the Renewing One Nation project, too. Of Montgomerie’s notable internal supporters, only one was Christian: David Lidington.

Montgomerie’s most important ally was Iain Duncan Smith. Elected to the party leadership in 2001, the Roman Catholic was best known for his staunch Euroscepticism. But during a visit to the Easterhouse Estate in Glasgow in 2002, he became convinced of the need for social reform.

As Duncan Smith’s right-hand man, Montgomerie advocated a more liberal line on sexuality than most of his co-religionists would be comfortable with, recommending the Tories vote for the abolition of Section 28, a clause that forbade the “promotion” of homosexuality in schools.

Duncan Smith was ousted in 2003 and replaced by Michael Howard. Though Howard had promised to continue the focus on social policy, leading from “the centre”, the party tacked to the right and poverty became a backwater issue.

Supplanted, Duncan Smith carved out a new role. With Montgomerie & Philippa Stroud, another Christian activist, he set up the Centre for Social Justice – a successor to Renewing One Nation. The CSJ was Christian in tone & hiring.

https://twitter.com/docrussjackson/status/1472255138219843590?s=20&t=WxhmrnK1CS5LFn9D25RNoA

In 2005, Howard resigned the leadership after another general-election drubbing for the Tories. A leadership election followed that turned into a contest between David Cameron, known as a modernising liberal, and David Davis, the shadow home secretary and a “security Tory”.

Neither had social conservatives in the bag. Cameron won over suspicious right-wingers with Eurosceptic pledges & a promise to continue the work on social policy begun under Duncan Smith, endorsing an early proposal by the CSJ to introduce an income tax break to support marriage.

Christians were a small part of the coalition that won Cameron the leadership battle, but they became crucial to him in office. His mission was to “decontaminate” the Tory party’s “devil take the hindmost” image. Along with environmentalism, poverty became one of his big themes.

But the #TuftonStreet think-tanks rarely looked at welfare – only the CSJ devoted resources to it. One research department official said when it came to starting the push on social deprivation: “we had no support at all. Our family & welfare policy was all outsourced to the CSJ.”

Soon after Cameron’s election, Duncan Smith was invited to write a series of reports on poverty as part of the party’s policy review. And while some at the CSJ were concerned about losing their independence, it was worth what they won: relevance.

Two years after being exiled by Michael Howard, a small group of Christian Tories were defining the party’s social policy. The opaquely funded CSJ went on to craft at least 70 of Cameron's @Conservatives' policies.

The CSJ has attracted wealthy backers, such as Brextremist Paul Marshall, co-founder & Chair of Marshall Wace LLP, one of Europe's largest hedge fund groups. In 2019 he "gave" the Tories £500,000, & in 2020/2021 invested, in a personal capacity, £10 million into GB "News".

Back in 2010, among the secular members of the Tory party machine, there was unease about the influence of the Christian Right. The use of the CSJ’s research, in particular, caused concern.

One official – who, like all party staff the FT's Chris Cook spoke to in 2010, refused to go on the record – said: “Their hearts are in the right place, but loads of their stuff is ropey. They just seem to make up statistics or use dodgy assumptions.”

In 2009, Samantha Callan, who produced the CSJ’s policy review papers, took up a post in the Tory internal policy unit. There, she produced a position paper on the “commercialisation” of childhood, in which she proposed a tough line on sexualisation of young girls.

But the vague proposals reveal a big Tory contradiction - 'moralising' society can sometimes be seen as advocating government censorship (& therefore Nanny state/anti-freedom) & so it received a frosty reception from the largely secular staff at CCHQ (what was formerly the CCO).

Which brings me back onto the issue of abortion. Inevitably, the Tory ringleaders of any abortion-tightening attempts are Christians. In 2008, when parliament was debating embryology, Nadine Dorries led the charge against abortion.

https://twitter.com/docrussjackson/status/1542253878959292416?s=20&t=OeUHl1ar-fh3Lh5j0wnpSA

A leading anti-abortion activist noted the Christian Medical Fellowship & the Lawyers Christian Fellowship were “absolutely indispensable. They did most of the heavy lifting on research. But we could never acknowledge their role. People would never take us seriously again.”

Dorries avoids talking about faith in parliament out of fear it will set a precedent by which Muslim MPs could impose theirs: “There is no place for sharia law in Britain... we have to be aware & vigilant to ensure that we don’t ease or facilitate its acceptance.” 😬

In 2010, Dorries falsely claimed “Stalin told his top scientist to turn his skills to breeding an ultimate soldier by crossing human beings with apes… The DoH says what we do today will never be abused or subject to experimentation in the future, but I would not be so sure”.

Dorries' regressive 2011 abortion amendment was designed to provide greater opportunities for 'independent counsellors', some of whom are influenced by pro-life groups, to provide counselling.

theguardian.com/world/2011/sep…

At the 2009 Tory party conference, Cameron delivered an angry riff on the UK’s poverty trap – and received a standing ovation for it. Montgomerie says it brought tears to his eyes. After all, it was the culmination of two decades of largely behind-the-scenes work.

Montgomerie is still influential. In 2005 he set up the website ConservativeHome, which has over the years helped drag the @Conservatives further & further Right, but cemented the perception of Montgomerie as some kind of voice of the aging & dwindling band of grassroots Tories.

In 2005, Montgomerie successfully opposed plans to strip party activists of their votes in leadership elections, which years later played a part in lumbering Britain with the catastrophic premiership of Liz Truss.

https://twitter.com/docrussjackson/status/1562410418253041664?s=20&t=OeUHl1ar-fh3Lh5j0wnpSA

In 2010, another MP said of his vote on abortion laws: “I don’t want to be just a constituency MP, answering letters. I want to be a minister. And the last thing I want is for ConservativeHome to take against me because I dared to vote against the approved Tim Montgomerie line.”

Montgomerie's 2009 words seem prophetic: “If Britain’s relationship with the [European Union] is fundamentally the same after five years of Conservative government, the internal divisions that ended the last Tory period in government will look like a tea party in comparison.”

Back to Fiona Bruce MP.

In February 2015, Bruce introduced an amendment to the Serious Crime Bill 2014 to make abortion on the grounds of the sex of the baby illegal. The amendment was rejected by 292 votes to 201.

newstatesman.com/politics/2015/…

Commenting on the Irish referendum on abortion, she framed a group of MPs campaigning to remove abortion from the criminal law as extremists: "At first glance, this might seem reasonable. Compassionate, even – until you realise the shocking extremism of their demands."

Predictably, Bruce supported Brexit, & in 2019, she chaired a controversial inquiry by the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission into prostitution, which seemed to downplay or ignore the influence of poverty & austerity on sex work.

theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

In 2021 Bruce co-authored the essay "Family Matters – the Case for Strengthening Families" with former MP, David Burrowes, for inclusion in 'Common Sense: Conservative Thinking for a Post-Liberal Age' published by the swivel-eyed 'Common Sense Group'.

https://twitter.com/docrussjackson/status/1540619934664953857?s=20&t=WxhmrnK1CS5LFn9D25RNoA

Anyway, how come she has the fourth largest outside earnings of any MP - even more than Jacob Rees-Mogg & rishi Sunak, who don't even make the top twenty?

Here's the link to the Register of Members' Financial Interests - 2019 Parliament:
publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm/cmregmem…

Much of Bruce's additional income (totalling £711,000 since 2019) comes from "consultancy" under 'Fiona Bruce & Co LLP'; solicitors practice, with multiple payments of £5,000 for 7 hours work (£714/hour).

And with her husband, she has an extensive Land & property portfolio.

Her Land & property portfolio includes: three residential properties in Warrington, Cheshire owned jointly with her husband. A fourth property was purchased on 1 February 2016 & another sold on 30 September 2021.

It also looks like she has an additional "five commercial properties in Warrington", a "commercial property in Knutsford", & a "part interest in a residential property in Warrington".

publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm/cmregmem…

Everyone is concerned about the influence of the US Christian Right on US politics - not least in #RoeVWade. Don't think the exact same organisations & donors behind the exact same think tanks & lobbyists aren't embedded in the heart of the UK Government:

https://twitter.com/docrussjackson/status/1606391183063846947?s=20&t=U8QaH5V1_5UWMPtDGZN4tw

I often tweet about Turning Point USA & its bastard offspring Turning Point UK, now rebranded as 'Orthodox Conservatives' & endorsed by the likes of Liz Truss supporters Priti Patel & "Christians" Steve Baker & Jacob Rees-Mogg.

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1550954716913360896?s=20&t=U8QaH5V1_5UWMPtDGZN4tw

Members of the Orthodox Conservatives group make regular appearances in the national right-wing press & as guests on broadcasters TalkRadio & GB "News".

The group is part of an influential network which includes MPs & members of the far-right:

https://twitter.com/docrussjackson/status/1548971873379270656?s=20&t=U8QaH5V1_5UWMPtDGZN4tw

Finally, a fantastic resource I was previously unaware of, which is a very useful tool for investigating how much money MP's receive, & more importantly, from whom.

Simply type in the name of the MP to see who "gives" them money.

tortoisemedia.com/westminster-ac…

Fiona Bruce MP is or has been an officer of 16 All-Party Parliamentary Groups (APPGs) – informal groups of MPs & peers organised around a specific issue, location or other area of interest.

They have no official status within Parliament.

https://twitter.com/docrussjackson/status/1592161699876200449?s=20&t=XYzSmok3yaDtQIGLPZbTEw

APPGs can receive donations & other benefits & are required to report interests above £1,500. Many receive no outside funding, including some Bruce has been on. Since the end of 2019, 8 APPGs Bruce is or has been an officer of have collectively taken in the equivalent of £283K.

During the current parliament so far, the @Conservatives have received donations, gifts, & other payments & benefits from 737 sources worth at least a staggering £76 million.

As Elon Musk infamously said when he took over @Twitter, 'let that sink in'.