The New Establishment, Indeed

There is a lazy assumption that other religious bodies, especially the Catholic Church and these days also the institutional expressions of Islam, are at least broadly in favour of the disestablishment of the Church of England, and see some potential advantage for themselves in such a prospect.

The tiniest modicum of research would put paid to any such delusion.

But then, who knows about the history of the Catholic Church and Irish Republicanism? Or about the history of the Church of Ireland and Irish Republicanism? Or about the history of the Ulster Presbyterians and Irish Republicanism? A lot of people think that they do.

Or about the very strong and ongoing opposition of the Darul Uloom Deoband to the theory of  a separate Indo-Islamic nation? Or about the no less pronounced objections to the secession of Kosovo by the leaders of Serbia's Catholics, Jews, Roma, Muslims (yes, Muslims) and Albanians (yes, Albanians)?

Or about the very close ties between the Moscow Patriarchate and the Soviet regime, ties that were not without a refined metaphysical basis? Or about the practically symbiotic relationship between the Bulgarian Orthodox Church and the Communist regime in Bulgaria?

Further examples good, bad and indifferent could be added at great length in order to confuse the permanently adolescent.

Among whom are are those who depict the kind of secularism recently and pointedly expressed in the Daily Telegraph as somehow part of "the Left", to which only a handful of this week's signatories had any known connection.

At least in Britain, it is the Right, at least as organised in partisan and connected terms, that has long had every reason to wish to see Christianity, as such, banished from public discourse, something for which it must be said that this week's signatories did not call.

Anyone worried that a future Labour Government might seek to extend the Conservatives' same-sex marriage legislation to the Church of England or to the Church in Wales has missed the point of quite what important Labour allies those now are. They are not going to be upset.

Labour anti-trade union legislation may be wildly improbable, but the unions would never go anywhere else even if they could. So even Labour action against them would still be more likely than this.

The Catholic Church, the old Free Churches and the black-majority churches, together accounting for around two thirds of English churchgoers and the same in Wales, are of course reliable members of the Labour family in any case.

But of course they could never quite say so. Just as the Anglicans, as such, could never quite say either that, or that they were "the Tory Party at prayer". 

In this age of Royal Mail privatisation, of the impending abolition of what little remains of Sunday trading restrictions, of the prospect of toll roads, and of so much else, Labour needs to look elsewhere, although not very far away, for Toryland's Pearl Harbor.

On the night of the vote on Syria, Ed Miliband ought to have published the list of Conservative, and possibly also of Liberal Democrat, MPs who had not supported the Government, welcoming each of them, and one other nominee of each of them, to his new Foreign Policy Advisory Board.

It would have been entirely up to them whether or not they had turned up, or brought with them Peter Oborne, or Geoffrey Wheatcroft, or Peter McKay, or Andrew Alexander, or Stephen Glover, or Peter Hitchens, or John Laughland, or Mark Almond, or Matthew Parris, or whoever. But non-participation would have provided a most unflattering backlight to any subsequent complaint.

Today, Ed Miliband ought to announce that, while each of them would of course retain its independence, from the following Monday he would be accompanied at almost all times by someone from each of the National Farmers Union, the Federation of Small Businesses, Rotary International in Great Britain and Ireland, Lions Clubs International in Great Britain and Ireland, the National Federation of Women's Institutes, the Townswomen's Guilds, the Royal British Legion, the Police Federation, the Scout Association, and Girlguiding UK.

Nor would these companions be expected to keep silent. After all, having been brought by the Leader, who would ask them to do so, never mind to leave the room?

They would of course be made aware of what could be reported and what could not. They might very well be so aware already.

But within those parameters, such reporting, through their respective organisations and those organisations' wider networks, would be routine, and would reach deep into Tory Britain.

Not least among those wider networks are the grassroots of the Church of England and the Church in Wales.

Among other things.