The Church’s ideas on social justice have been an inspiration for all the major parties, but how much will translate into substance? asks Conor Pope

The role of Catholic Social Teaching in modern British politics briefly entered the arena of popular debate when Michael Gove recently claimed in The Times that Theresa May was the United Kingdom’s “first Catholic Prime Minister”. Gove’s main evidence for his claim, along with her Desert Island Discs choices, was May’s use of the phrase “common good” when speaking about the economy. 

For those familiar with Catholic Social Teaching, it is certainly a phrase that rings a bell. Seen through the prism of Gove’s analysis – as a counterbalance to “the twin dangers of excessive individualism and oppressive statism” – Catholic Social Teaching appears analogous to the hallowed turf of the political centre ground. It may have helped to develop New Labour, which was both pro-market and pro-social justice, and narrowed the ideological gap between the UK’s centre-Left and European Christian democracy.