When tradition deserves a break

Upsetting a convention caused uproar, so is it right to break with tradition?

Yaroslav Walker

Yaroslav is Vicar of Christ Church, Hampstead.

A robed and seated man, in a speaker's chair talks and gesticulates.

The House of Common's Speaker.

Parliament TV.

“Nearly a quarter of a century has passed since a speaker of the Commons stood down from its high chair with dignity and to applause.” Thus wrote Andrew Rawnsley in the Guardian this Sunday. Last week the House of Commons erupted. An unedifying lava-spew of recrimination and anger flowed through the corridors of power as the Speaker of the House, The Right Honourable Sir Lindsay Hoyle, broke parliamentary convention to the seeming benefit of the Labour Party. Memories of his predecessors’ playing fast-and-loose with Parliamentary procedure pushed buttons. The SNP’s Gaelic fury founded a flurry of calls for the Speaker to step-down, and it was not until he gave a near-tearful apology that some calm seemed to be restored. Opponents cried foul - ‘how dare he upend the conventions of the House!?’ - while supporters jumped to his aid - ‘he was just trying to protect MPs from further harassment over the Israel-Gaza debate!’ - and everyone was unhappy…

The technicalities of this convention (that multiple amendments are not called upon for voting during an Opposition Day Debate) are less interesting to me than the fact that the convention exists. ‘Convention’ is another word for ‘tradition’. Traditions are important. Our famously ‘unwritten’ Constitution relies heavily on tradition, especially for the smooth running of Parliament. Rather than having the process of legislating and governing micro-managed with procedural minutiae, the Commons operate on the basis of nurturing and conforming to its traditions. In essence, the House of Commons operates on the basis of respect - by respecting the traditions of the House, Parliamentarians grow to respect each other as fellow followers of tradition. Exterior action builds-up interior disposition. Practice influences sentiment.

At least, that’s my romantic take on it. Traditions give some coherence to a society - from the society of elected MPs right through the society of a nation - and allow it to flourish. Traditions bind people together. Traditions unite. You may come from a different part of the country than your neighbour, have different family values, have a different religion or skin-colour or education-level, etc…but you can be united in the traditions you follow. Whether it’s having a roast on a Sunday, going to a Carol Service in December, singing Three Lions in a World Cup year, the traditions you share despite all other differences give you a common cause with those around you.

This is not to say that traditions can’t have a dark side. Some traditions can alienate guests. Some traditions can stifle creativity and innovation. Some traditions can be maintained purely to bamboozle the uninitiated for the benefit of those in the know. In extremis, some traditions can lead to groupthink, to the othering of those who don’t share them, to jingoism and hatred; St Paul wrote that it was the zeal for the traditions of his fathers than led him to persecute the first Christians. Traditions should never be taken for granted or left unexamined. Traditions are roses - beautiful and sweet-smelling, but always in need of pruning. But let the gardener prune carefully - you want some roses left for the garden.

When the scribes and Pharisees try to trick and trap Jesus with impossible thought experiments, they often quote their traditions. Jesus always wins the debate. He wins in the face of their traditionalism. He wins by being a radical. RADICAL! His radicalism is not marked by the abandonment of the concept of tradition, but by deep respect for it. The Sermon on the Mount is probably the most famous speech about the importance of tradition - “You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times…But I say to you…” - keeping the traditions of God in the face of the self-serving traditions of men. The scribes and the Pharisees are the White Witch to Jesus’ Aslan: ‘“It means,” said Aslan, “that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time.”’

Not every critic last week will have genuinely cared about the traditions of the House of Commons. Many will have mouthed the words but would have happily stood by if the breaking of convention benefited them. Nevertheless, we must take tradition, and it’s breaking, seriously. Traditions nurtures the relationships of MPs. Traditions nurture the relationships of neighbours and fellow citizens. Traditions nurture relationship with God, as the traditional rhythms of religious practice and Church seasons help order prayer and worship. Perhaps we’ll look back on the upturning of this particular Commons tradition and recognise it as the right rejection of an outdated convention…but let's be cautious. Traditions are important. Break them with care.

Article

Ambition

Comment

Death & life

Economics

20 May 2025

4 min read

Forget the Rich List, wealth needs deeper foundations than money

Your neighbourhood might be cool or gentrified now, but where will you go when you die?

Jamie Mulvaney

Jamie is Vicar of St Michael's Chester Square, London.

A red Ferrari parked on a posh London Street

Parked Ferrari off Belgrave Square, London.

John Cameron on Unsplash.

To drive from Clapham to north of the river in London, you go past a warning sign. It's not an LED flashing one, instead it's painted on a Victorian building in uneven serif lettering:

'For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?'

It implies that the man (or the woman) on the Clapham omnibus, whatever their wealth, ignores it at their peril.

I recently made that same journey from living in Clapham – a place of relative wealth to one of alleged extreme wealth, in Belgravia. My initial reflections are that people are people, and that wealth doesn't resolve all our problems. There's actually far more poverty, both physical and spiritual, than meets the prejudice.

But that Victorian sign speaks to our aspirations, for those with a little, and those with a lot. We think that more is more. Cities feed the striver, and in that pursuit of wealth some argue that our cities are losing their souls. While South-West London might not be the most drippingly cool places in London, they have historically been places for those who are in professions that are cool-adjacent. Of those involved in academia or journalism, Josiah Gogarty wrote in the New Statesman:

'These professions never promised luxury, but they did deliver a respectable middle-class lifestyle for even the moderately successful. But try buying a house in centralish London today off an income that isn’t made in, or by servicing, the City.'

As it happens, this week I heard one journalist on the radio saying a comfortable amount to have in his bank would be £7 million. How much is enough?

But for grads in service professions with healthy cashflows and bonuses, you can still rent in ‘centralish’ London. No doubt the affluent who house-share have buoyed Clapham Common Westside into the position of having the highest average household wealth of anywhere in the UK, at over £100k. Gogarty continues:

'Call it Claphamisation, after the London neighbourhood of choice for graduates with dependable jobs and straightforward tastes. Gentrification took your money, or forced you to care about money more than you would’ve done otherwise. Now Claphamisation is coming for your cool.'

In other words, gaining the world means losing your soul.

Both riches and coolness are irrelevant as the casket is lowered into the ground.

But even those markers of mainstream wealth and its own version of cool are uncertain as the annual Sunday Times Rich List over the weekend reflected. Your heart mightn't bleed for those falling off their perches, with a threshold of £350 million. But economic turbulence also unsteadies the presumed foundations of wealth.

Wealth needs a deeper foundation than money. And soul needs a warmer foundation than cool. Harvard Professor Dr Arthur Brooks, says that love is

'what the human heart really, really wants. And a lot of people are thinking, you know, if I have the money, and I buy the stuff, then I'm going to get more love.'

Wealth, and I would argue coolness, are intermediaries to this love.

Tending to our souls means opening ourselves to a love that is far richer than what's on the surface. That's not to say that Christian theology denies the physical, however. It teaches an embodied understanding of our souls. I was all too aware of this standing by a coffin, taking a funeral this week. We are material beings and made of material. But our inner settled-ness in what drives us and what we are devoted to far outweighs the trappings of life.

I have seen people dazzled by their own wealth and others seriously unimpressed by it. And while most of us would quite like the chance to find out for ourselves that wealth is an imposter, both riches and coolness are irrelevant as the casket is lowered into the ground.

Those serif letters on that sign on the edge of Clapham are easily ignored. They seem out of place as the cars and Lime bikes zoom past. But the words aren't disembodied: they were spoken by someone. When a rich young man, sure in his own good living and upstandingness, turned his back on Jesus, he was sad, holding onto his wealth. The eyes that looked on him still loved him.

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