Article
Ambition
Comment
General Election 24
Politics
5 min read

Is it really time to “go for the jugular”?  

How to handle political enemies.
A screen grab of a news paper report with a headline and picture. The headline reads: 'Go for Keir Starmer’s jugular to rescue campaign, Rishi Sunak urged'.
The Times' 16 June headline.
The Times.

As the election campaigns trundle down the hill to election day, poll trackers have shown little meaningful change for weeks. Amongst my friends and acquaintances, I can find barely anyone who is bothering to read the campaign coverage. No doubt, news editors are just as bored as we are with the same-old, same-old. Perhaps it is they who are leaning on commentators to spice up their language, saying things like it is time to “go for the jugular”. Are they straining for headlines by provoking candidates to stop waving manifestos and start lobbing personal attacks? (And did anyone stop to consider the irresponsibility of such language, following the awful, violent murders of MPs Jo Cox and David Amess?)    

It is very uncomfortable to have enemies, which only makes it all the more astonishing that anyone ever goes into politics – professional enemy-making, if you will. And there is an incredible subtlety to the business. As a politician, one needs to be a convincing enemy to one’s enemy, but at the same time, a convincing friend to one’s enemy’s friends (in the hope that they might switch their allegiance). Then, if elected, one must serve a whole constituency, including many ‘enemies’ who didn’t actually vote for you, and probably never will. In such a complicated game of gregarious gymnastics, and with the ever worrying rise of violence and threats against MP’s, how on earth does a politician maintain any reasonable sense of safety and of self? 

An enemy who has lost his temper is one of the few people that you can trust to tell you the truth about yourself. 

Reflecting on this, I wonder whether the game of politics gives a fresh insight into those very famous words that Jesus once said: “Love your enemies.” This instruction has long baffled and inspired the great thinkers of this world. Why would Jesus say such a thing? Some focus on the way in which loving one’s enemies benefits the lover. Desmond Tutu, for example, said, “Love your enemy: it will ruin his reputation.” Or Mark Twain, somewhat more cynically, said, “Love your enemy: it will scare the hell out of them.” There are many others I could quote here, but the general theme is one of power. Loving empowers the lover to keep going in the face of hate, and it is surely the only way an MP can get through the day, serving so many people who didn’t actually vote for them.  

But looking at those who speak of enemies, there is another general theme that can be identified, one which pre-dates Jesus’ command to love enemies, and one that is to do with the way in which they help to define us. The Greek Philosopher Antisthenes is reported to have said that an enemy who has lost his temper is one of the few people that you can trust to tell you the truth about yourself. As a thinker, Antisthenes was famously cynical, one who very much subscribed to a “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” kind of vibe, even welcoming ill-repute because it could help one to grow in virtue.  

Given the popularity of Greek Philosophy in the first century, it is possible that many of Jesus’ listeners had Antisthenes pithy advice, or something like it, in the back of their minds when Jesus uttered his famous words. Of the many ways to understand “love your enemies”, some may have heard it as a reminder that enemies do us a kind of service. They help us to define ourselves, giving a profound (if somewhat uncomfortable) reflection of how we appear to others. Of course, enemies are biased. Like a distorted mirror, they over emphasise our bad propensities and overlook the good. But taken in the right spirit, this serves as a foil to our friends and acquaintances who may well distort the uncomfortable truth about ourselves in the opposite direction.  

Perhaps it is no bad thing for our politicians to admit their mutual enmity – not in the sense of tearing each other down but in the sense of sharpening each other up... 

As a young adult, I was given the advice not to fear enemies, but to divide them up into two categories: enemies in residence and enemies in exile. The exiled ones are the ones who are simply dangerous or nasty – the bullies, the gossips and those who may tend towards violence. To love these people is to pity them and to pray for them, but also to keep them far enough away so that they cannot do you harm. Enemies in residence, however, are the useful ones. These are the enemies that you keep just close enough so that you can hear what they have to say. They will scrutinise your words and your actions, they will cast doubt on your motivations, and they will scoff at your ambitions. All of this is both miserably uncomfortable and highly valuable, sowing just enough seeds of self-doubt that you check yourself, analyse yourself and strive to be the best that you can be.  

Perhaps Antisthenes was on to something: when it comes to harsh critique from enemies, what doesn’t kill you does indeed make you stronger. And perhaps this is one of the ways to interpret Jesus’ words, “love your enemies” – in the sense of loving what they do for you in terms of personal growth. If this is the case, then perhaps it is no bad thing for our politicians to admit their mutual enmity – not in the sense of tearing each other down but in the sense of sharpening each other up, of spurring each other on to be the best, most clearly defined versions of themselves that they can be.  

So, it is fine with me if there are enemies in politics: a person with enemies is a person who knows who they are and what they stand for. Enemies should, as Jesus advised, love each other enough to do the job properly and fairly – (this is no inlet for cowardly keyboard warriors). But even so, I didn’t care for the cheap, headline-grabbing phrase “go for the jugular” – it all sounds unnecessarily violent. As much as we and our politicians should love one another enough to be enemies, let us not love one other to death.   

Article
Comment
Development
War & peace
3 min read

South Sudan is on the brink, but it can pull back

The UK can join local peacemakers in preventing a new civil war.

James Wani is Christian Aid’s South Sudan’s Country Director.

A Sudanese woman walks across the ashes of a burnt out street market.
A burnt-out market place in South Sudan.
Christian Aid.

It’s been two years since Sudan slid into a brutal power struggle between the army and its former ally, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Despite its size and savagery, blink and you might miss it as the world media remains mesmerised by the White House tariffs.  

Sudan’s people have suffered on a scale that’s almost impossible to take in. It is the world's biggest humanitarian crisis. More than 12.5 million people have been forced from their homes. Some estimates suggest up to 150,000 people had been killed so far in the conflict.  

The ensuing chaos has spilled into neighbouring countries like South Sudan where I live. Over the last year almost a million refugees and returnees have crossed the border to escape horrific war crimes, violence and rape. 

Neither are they escaping into a land of peace and stability. Resources are stretched as South Sudan grapples with long-standing challenges like floods and droughts from climate change and our own fragile peace process.  

Those crossing from the north have added a crisis on top of the existing crises. Nine million people here need humanitarian assistance - three quarters of South Sudan’s population.  

Christian Aid and its local partners are doing what they can to support this huge influx from Sudan by providing cash, emergency supplies and access to water and sanitation to more than 100,000 people.   

But even these attempts at relief might be short-lived. Fears are growing that South Sudan may follow Sudan and topple into civil war. 400,000 people died over five years in the last one. Ominous signs are there for a renewed conflict.  

Late last year in Juba there was an outbreak of violence between the President’s military forces and armed groups connected to the former head of the National Security Agency. The country’s first ever elections keep on being postponed. Tensions escalated in February. An unelected Reconstituted Transitional National Assembly was not called back from recess to discuss this.  

Now the country's First Vice-President Riek Machar is under house arrest. South Sudan's President Salva Kiir accused Machar of stirring up a new revolt. Last month, the US ordered all its non-emergency staff in South Sudan to leave as fighting broke out in one part of the country.  

Just this month, the UN mission’s plane was shot down, killing staff and a wounded armed forces general, allegedly by groups allied to the Vice-President. Uganda has sent its army to support the President and airstrikes on civilian areas and opposition compounds in four states are now nearing the capital.   

South Sudan might be on the brink, but this isn’t a doctrine of despair. The country can pull back.  

Christian Aid doesn’t just provide humanitarian support - we are in the business of hope. by working hand in hand with local activists, like the South Sudan Council of Churches (SSCC), to help the country’s government establish and implement the 2018 peace agreement.   

Respected church leaders have, and are, playing a key role in building trust and confidence:  brokering peace deals at local level, undertaking shuttle diplomacy in South Sudan’s states, talking to armed groups to urge them to get behind the peace agreement and to the President and Vice-President to return to honouring their agreement. The new elected head of SSCC, Rev. Tut Kony Nyang Kon, said their role was to bring the country around a unity of purpose.   

He said South Sudan’s leaders need to present a reinvigorated plan for free and fair elections in two years to reassure people, rally the peacemakers and deter those who may see an opportunity to undermine the peace gains made so far.  

But they need diplomatic support too.   

The UK, along with the USA and Norway, is part of the influential “Troika” that must make a serious diplomatic investment in the national and international peace processes to ensure that the existing peace agreement holds and deter other states from providing financial or military support that can fuel conflict and violence.  

The UK government needs to show it means what it says when it promised the UN Security Council last November that it would champion the protection of civilians and double aid for those fleeing the conflict in Sudan.  

2025 should be a leadership moment for the UK and the international community to increase support for the region and get behind South Sudan’s peacemakers to avoid another catastrophic conflict in Africa.