Mitochondrial

The Church of England's position on today's Commons vote is due entirely to the fact that the sections of it still paying the bills now barely register the existence of its own hierarchy and instead take their lead from abroad, especially Africa.

They do so not least through the growing presence in this country, and thus in their congregations, of products of the Anglo-Catholic and Evangelical missions of yesteryear, which never did bear much resemblance to most of the dear old C of E. 

The same was true on same-sex marriage, of which between a quarter and a third of its clergy, including at least one of yesterday's trio of "traditionalist" consecrating bishops, would otherwise have had a reasonable aspiration to avail themselves. (At Epiphany came the Three Kings; at Candlemas came the Three...)

When the Church of England was the supposed bastion of national independence as which its more, shall we say, eccentric supporters profess to value it, then it wrote the 1967 Abortion Act and the 1969 Divorce Reform Act. It did not merely support those Bills, although it certainly did that. It wrote them.

Had it still been such, then it would have supported both today's legislation and sex-sex marriage very enthusiastically, as it did in fact support earlier ventures into bioethical rogue statehood going back to the Thatcher and Major years. It would have enjoyed an active and prominent role in the drafting process.

Speaking of supposed bastions of national independence, the Conservative Party now stands for nothing, literally nothing, more than the presumption to dictate our electoral process by an Italian resident of Monaco who moved a venerable old British company to Switzerland in order to avoid paying for the National Health Service from which it profits enormously as a dispenser of prescription medicines.

The electorate has no truck with any such presumption.