A PLAIN greeting signifying goodwill on Christmas Day was all it took for social media’s moral sentinels to summon a firing squad. In this instance it wasn’t the message that caused offence but the messenger. “Today a saviour has been born to us. He is Christ the Lord.” These words adorn a million cards at this time of the year and bring warmth to the hearts of believers and non-believers alike. This one, though, came from the twitter account of Jacob Rees-Mogg and thus caused apoplexy in an army of the enlightened. Among them were many whose liberal values often evaporate when they suspect Christian sentiments are afoot.

At other times of the year they proclaim their disdain for those whom they suspect of harbouring such beliefs when they seem to clash with their own world view. In this instance, though, they elected to park their antipathy and instead became biblical exegetes for the day. It was like a Pentecostal rally as exhortations and quotations from the good book were weaponised and hurled back at Mr Rees-Mogg, the arch-Brexiter. “You cannot serve God and Mammon,” he was reminded. Others expressed a touching concern for the welfare of Mr Rees-Mogg’s immortal soul as they reminded him that it was easier for yon camel to go through the eye of yon needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Britain it seemed had come back to the Lord: Hallelujah and praise Him!

It’s not often I find myself coming to the defence of the right honourable Conservative member for North-east Somerset. Indeed, this may be a first. I have often been disobliging towards him and occasionally downright uncharitable. On the political and social spectrum he and I are as far apart as it’s possible to be.

I’m an unrepentant Socialist whom he would dismiss as belonging to the hard left. I would seek to nationalise every means of UK production and all of our services; tax the rich and assume control of their offshore accounts. I’d dump our nuclear weapons and grow turnips in the empty missile silos. I’d compel every local authority to house a quantum of refugees and asylum-seekers proportionate to its size.

I’d drive the landed gentry from that half of Scotland they currently own and re-calibrate it for use by local collectives and the travelling community. Show trials of those accused of causing and profiting from the 2008 banking crisis would begin immediately. Every single private school in the UK would be subject to a compulsory purchase order and returned to local authority control. As a professing Christian all of this easily accords with my beliefs. I would justify the economic pain this would entail for the middle classes by quoting from Mark 8:36, “What good is it for someone to gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his soul?” I may even refer to the story of the widow’s mite. A spell of economic hardship for the comfortable would only begin to make up for the inequality suffered by the disadvantaged over many centuries.

Mr Rees-Mogg, a professing Christian who shares my Catholic faith, may beg to differ. I suspect he would remove all restrictions, if he could, on the movement of capital and proclaim the hegemony of the free market. He would strengthen our nuclear arsenal and compel the poor to find any sort of work by withholding their benefits. He would make it easier for the rich to accumulate more wealth by lightening their tax burdens. He would restrict immigration to a trickle and create an environment so hostile for them they’d soon be retreating hastily to the hell-holes from which they’d sprung. The occasional war wouldn’t go amiss either to stiffen a sense of national unity and provide investment opportunities for him and his chums.

He might justify all of this according to the tenets of his faith by saying that he would encourage those whom God had favoured with material wealth to be charitable to those without. In the end it wouldn’t really matter anyway because God, in His infinite wisdom, would judge whether they had done so sufficiently. He would condemn my strategy as sinful for deliberately causing hardship and fomenting deep civil unrest, leading to the breakdown of law and order and family disunity. He might cite the parable of the talents in Matthew 25:14 or the one about the generous employer in Matthew 20.

I don’t know anything about Mr Rees-Mogg, apart from some of his political beliefs; not his character or any of his social habits. I don’t know about his abilities as a father, husband and employer. On one day this year he wished me and everyone else a simple message of goodwill with no strings attached or underlying agenda. Yet, he was shown no mercy for it simply because he is a Tory and a Brexiteer. He was judged harshly by those who are apparently blameless in all other aspects of their lives.

I suspect Mr Rees-Mogg and myself, besides sharing a common faith in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Saviour are also united in another belief: that the business of politics comes a very distant second to matters of faith. In my case this was carefully nurtured and handed down through generations by many who suffered and lost their lives for doing so. It will always take precedence over Scotland’s independence or the task of establishing my Socialist nirvana.

This faith has become increasingly problematic for an influential atheistic elite in Scotland and a poisonous cult that is currently seeking to wield disproportionate power within our governing party. The respected SNP MP Lisa Cameron secured re-election on December 12 despite a campaign of harassment, threat and intimidation from some within her own party for her Christian beliefs. Others with similar beliefs are bracing themselves for the same at the Holyrood elections in 2021. The people responsible for this have chosen to become my real enemies; not Jacob Rees-Mogg.

It would be wrong to judge the SNP by the actions of this toxic few. Like the other main political parties they possess good people with differing views on how best to achieve the happiness of the greatest many. And so, I accept Mr Rees-Mogg’s Christmas blessing and ask that God causes His light to shine upon him and his family too.