Stephen Crabb has resigned from government for “the best interests of his family”.
Reuters – Stephen Crabb, the former work and pensions secretary, is a devout Christian.
The former work and pensions secretary was discovered to have sent sexually explicit messages to a young woman during the run-up to the EU referendum. The revelations provoked speculation about his private life after the evangelical Christian, who is married, built a career around being a family man.
According to The Times, he told the woman most MPs are “risk takers… in the areas of money, sex, political opportunism” and that he wanted to kiss her “everywhere”. The public “can’t expect MPs to be angels”, he is reported as saying.
The resignation came as Theresa May announced her new cabinet on Thursday afternoon.
Michael Gove was sacked from his position as justice secretary and replaced with Liz Truss. Nicky Morgan was another high-profile figure to lose her job as education secretary. She was replaced by Justine Greening.
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Stephen Crabb has been a long-term member of the Conservative Christian Fellowship (CCF) and gave their annual Wilberforce Address in 2015. He told hundreds of Conservative members: “It is easier for a politician to admit to smoking weed or watching porn than it is to admit that they might take prayer seriously in their daily life.”
He also said Britain’s “hard-edged secularism” fuels religious extremism.
“The answer to the seduction of ISIL [Islamic State] is not a greater dose of secularism that delegitimises their faith in the public space,” he said. The “marginalisation of religion in our national life risks pushing more young Muslims into the arms of ISIL”.
He added: “If you push faith to the margins, then to the margins and into the shadows faith will be outworked.”