The First and Third Estates

Even George Monbiot matter-of-factly lists the Evangelical churches among the basic units for the rebuilding of the British and English Left from the bottom up.

And even the Church of England Newspaper, the organ of mainstream Anglican Evangelicalism, furiously denounces the Election as having been won by means of the sin of bearing false witness, and won in order to inflict all manner of iniquity upon the needy.

Well, of course.

Much as it baffles many Americans and those funny wannabe Americans who make up most of the British Right, and much as it baffles many people from the Continent for not unrelated reasons, anyone speaking specifically for religion in Britain is there in order to put the view to the left of the official Labour spokesman present, since no one is allowed to know about Labour Left MPs (whose number has just increased quite dramatically) or about trade union leaders.

That is at  least as true of the Evangelicals as it is of anyone else. Just as the main activity of the Catholic Church in this country is to run schools towards which She pays one tenth of the building costs while every other penny of their lives comes out of the public purse, and there are now parts of the NHS less socialised than that, so the main activity of the Evangelical churches is running the charities and community projects that take up the rest of the Catholic Church's energy, and which are massively dependent on the central and local government funding that has been cut to the bone in the last five years, with a lot more to come.

Moreover, that charity and community work tips over into political activism, as does the strong ethnic minority presence in Evangelical pews, as well as these days once again in Catholic ones. And increasingly in those of what might be called the mainstream Church of England, a body that is more and more dependent on immigration, especially from Africa, for its survival.

The process of politicisation is beginning that was avoided, for good or ill, when the dear old C of E of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s made itself unwelcoming to most of the West Indians, very many of whom were Anglicans when they got off the boats. Barbados remains now, as it was then, proportionally the most Anglican country in the world.

The Church of England in London and the Midlands could have been the beating heart of that era's emerging black politics. It will certainly have a role in this era's emerging black politics. It already does.

Most Catholic priests are as Old and Blue Labour as most Catholics are. The probable next Leader of the Labour Party is a practising Catholic who abstained on adoption by same-sex marriage and who voted against IVF for them.

That's right. Voted against it. Is that David Cameron's view? Is is George Osborne's? Is it Michael Gove's? Is it Boris Johnson's?

Most of those who pastor the Evangelical and the older Nonconformist churches are likewise in tune with the bulk of their flocks.

There are few Conservative figures comparable to the massively elected Stephen Timms, and none to compare to Gavin Shuker, previously the leader of the church that won him first selection, then a trend-bucking election, and now an extremely countercyclical re-election.

Even in Northern Ireland, the fundamentalist leaders are only "right-wing" until you mention anything at all connected to economics, such as the Bedroom Tax to which the DUP is vigorously opposed.

I am consciously avoiding a discussion of Scotland here. The lay of the land has changed, and is changing, dramatically. We shall see.

But the Anglican situation is different and odd. I sincerely believe that there are villages in the South where the only Labour votes come out of the vicarages.

Although there is a definite minority on each side, it is fair to say that a pronouncedly leftish and left-wing clerical body faces a laity made up very largely of tribal Tories, with a considerable element that subscribes to a kind of Thatcherism on steroids while holding that "religion and politics should be separate", a piece of historical and philosophical nonsense as entrenched and as pernicious on the Right as it is on the Left, and in Britain probably even more so.

After all, look at how the Anglican clergy spend their time, visiting and governing state schools while running or supporting charities and community projects that depend on public funding. All under bishops who are Members of Parliament and archbishops who are members of the Privy Council.

The 1945 Settlement built them into everything as a matter of course. Every erosion of that Settlement has been, is and will be an erosion of their position, a secularisation of the State.

Expect to hear a very great deal more from them over the course of the coming Parliament.