"It's really important to say this. Often the faith schools were founded before the state provided education. I want good education in this country so I'm not going to slag off faith schools. I think that it's important that people of different backgrounds and different faiths go to school together and many faith schools do that"
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Miliband is walking a political tightrope in public, and he wants you to see him balancing. The opening - "It's really important to say this" - is less a throat-clear than a preemptive defense: he anticipates the charge that Labour modernizers look down on faith, tradition, or communities that built institutions before Westminster bothered to. By invoking history ("founded before the state provided education"), he grants faith schools civic legitimacy: they are not special-interest enclaves but pioneers who filled a vacuum. That framing lets him praise them without conceding ideological ground.
The phrase "I'm not going to slag off faith schools" is tellingly colloquial, a deliberate lowering of register. It signals he is not auditioning for a think-tank seminar on secularism; he is speaking to voters who hear cultural snobbery when politicians critique religious institutions. Yet he immediately pivots to integration: "people of different backgrounds and different faiths go to school together". This is the real point. Miliband is trying to reconcile two Labour instincts that often clash - respect for pluralism and suspicion of segregation - by proposing a standard that sounds like common sense rather than regulation: good faith schools are the ones that mix.
"Many faith schools do that" is both reassurance and warning. Reassurance to religious communities that they are seen and valued; warning to the minority that don't integrate that the political weather is changing. The subtext: you can keep your ethos, but you can't opt out of the shared civic project. In an era anxious about social cohesion and identity politics, he stakes out a middle line: protect the institutions, demand the outcomes.
The phrase "I'm not going to slag off faith schools" is tellingly colloquial, a deliberate lowering of register. It signals he is not auditioning for a think-tank seminar on secularism; he is speaking to voters who hear cultural snobbery when politicians critique religious institutions. Yet he immediately pivots to integration: "people of different backgrounds and different faiths go to school together". This is the real point. Miliband is trying to reconcile two Labour instincts that often clash - respect for pluralism and suspicion of segregation - by proposing a standard that sounds like common sense rather than regulation: good faith schools are the ones that mix.
"Many faith schools do that" is both reassurance and warning. Reassurance to religious communities that they are seen and valued; warning to the minority that don't integrate that the political weather is changing. The subtext: you can keep your ethos, but you can't opt out of the shared civic project. In an era anxious about social cohesion and identity politics, he stakes out a middle line: protect the institutions, demand the outcomes.
Quote Details
| Topic | Learning |
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