Focus: Are 'traditional values' set to make a political comeback?

THE focus of interest thus far on the outcome of the Glasgow East by-election has been on whether Labour's dramatic defeat will bring an end to Gordon Brown's premiership. There are, though, other issues that deserve to be considered, particularly in light of the challenges posed to Labour by leading Scottish Catholics.

In the last census, a third of the voters in Glasgow East were identified as Roman Catholics, and they can hardly have been unaware of the Church's growing frustration with the party that traditionally was regarded as the home of the Scottish Catholic vote.

The constituency falls within the Motherwell diocese of Bishop Joseph Devine, who has been increasingly public in his criticisms of what he sees as Labour's sustained attack upon moral values.

His concern ahead of last year's elections for the Holyrood parliament was over gay and unmarried adoption and civil partnership, but that followed upon related, if less direct criticism, from others, including Archbishop Mario Conti and Cardinal Keith O'Brien, of easier divorce, sex-education strategies and abortion.

One of the few Scottish Labour figures to respond publicly in May 2007 was Margaret Curran, then minister for parliamentary business. She expressed puzzlement, saying, "I can't quite understand why he is so focused on Labour", adding that "the legislation that has been passed, particularly on moral issues around equality and gay adoption, has been supported by many political parties, so it's not just an anti-Labour point".

This rather missed the point, for the criticism was of a party that had long been socially conservative but which had authored the reforming policies. Certainly she failed to heal the growing rift between Labour and Scottish Catholicism.

A year or so later, with the recent by-election having been called, Bishop Devine returned to his theme: this time, and again in line with other statements by fellow bishops, criticising Labour over the embryo bill. In a letter to all Labour MPs for Scottish constituencies, he wrote of the government as "violating moral law" and "losing ethical credibility" and as having "broken its pact with Christian voters". Once again, Margaret Curran, now Labour candidate for Glasgow East, responded, saying that, were she elected, she would vote with the government and would also oppose any attempt to lower the time limit for abortion.

The SNP candidate, by contrast, said he was opposed to embryo experimentation and abortion on demand, spoke of his own Christian faith, and ten days later, having overturned the Labour majority and defeated Mrs Curran, used his victory speech publicly to "thank all those who have prayed for me during this campaign".

Any tendency to treat Bishop Devine's comments as isolated and unrepresentative of the Church more generally has to deal with the fact that the line of Catholic criticism of Labour's turn to moral revisionism began a decade ago in the period of Cardinal Thomas Winning and comes not from crypto-Conservatives, but from those steeped in the tradition of the Church's social teaching.

Moreover, the critics are not confined to the clergy. At the end of May, Conor McGinn resigned as vice-chair of Young Labour over what he described as "the party's one-sided approach to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill" and the emergence of a growing anti-Catholic "sectarian diatribe". And in the week prior to Bishop Devine's letter to MPs, the composer James MacMillan wrote an article in the Daily Telegraph charting his own disillusionment with Labour and predicting the loss of Glasgow East.

The trajectory from social justice, solidarity and Christian family values towards social engineering and lifestyle individualism is all but complete; yet the direction taken by Labour is not carrying it up to a newer Jerusalem, but precipitating it to a crash in metropolitan Babylon.

On the day prior to the Glasgow East by-election, Labour's Diane Abbott led the tabling of an amendment to the embryo bill proposing the extension of the 1967 Abortion Act to Northern Ireland. This is widely seen as part of a broader movement led from within Labour to use the bill to liberalise abortion law further. In so doing, it not only runs counter to sentiment in traditional Labour heartlands, but, in the case of Northern Ireland, stands opposed by all main parties.

In his letter to Scottish Labour MPs, Bishop Devine wrote: "When one considers the self-inflicted injuries this Labour government has visited upon itself, one could be forgiven for thinking it had some kind of death wish." In light of the result in Glasgow East, one could wonder whether these words might now be taken to heart, and a halt, if not a reversal, be made to policies that are alienating traditional supporters.

It will not be so, however, because, like the Trotskyists of an earlier period, New Labour's liberal entryists are convinced of their own righteousness and superior judgment. Opposition to their policies seems confirmation of them, particularly when it comes from quarters they regard as dark corners of religious superstition and prejudice.

So what now? For the political commentators, the story is one of the end of Brown's premiership, the defeat of Labour at the next election and, by default, the coming to power of the Conservatives. But that is, at most, the beginning of another chapter, which may also be trouble-strewn, and for much the same reason. David Cameron has sought to "decontaminate the Tory brand", and that has involved aping the modernising liberalism of New Labour.

In Scotland, social conservatives are looking with new-found favour upon Alex Salmond's SNP, which is increasingly tolerant of traditional values, while socialists also see merit in a party that favours public services. That coalition of interest will further erode Labour north of the Border, but it may also put pressure on Mr Cameron to reconsider the virtues of social conservatism. A new politics may be beginning.

John Haldane is professor of philosophy and the director of the Centre for Ethics, Philosophy and Public Affairs in the department of moral philosophy at the University of St Andrews.