Spirited

Never let it be said that I take up the causes only of people with whom I might get on if we met.

Ched Evans and I would have nothing to say to each other. I have no interest in football. I am not hostile to it. As a social and cultural phenomenon, I find it quite interesting. But the game itself has simply never appealed to me.

As for Evans's undisputed sexual behaviour, I find it morally repugnant. And I might be wrong, but I doubt that he shares my theological, philosophical, political, historical and literary interests.

Although I am not joking when I say that I might be wrong about that. There are some highly intelligent footballers, even if there are few particularly well-educated ones.

But whereas Ched Evans and I would doubtless face each other in silence, Lutfur Rahman and I would have a proper shouting match.

However, last night, Rahman addressed a rally of his supporters. Despite the fact that several of the charges upheld against him were also criminal offences, he has not been arrested, well over a week after that judgement.

I am inclined to believe in the veracity of those allegations, although the place to test them ought to be a criminal court with a jury, with the judge's having the power to impose the present electoral penalties alongside other sentences in the event of a conviction.

Whereas "undue spiritual influence" is altogether a different matter. It is a preposterous and pernicious provision.

Although many are concentrated in certain areas, from one end of this Kingdom to the other there are churchwardens, elders, circuit preachers, licensed Readers, sacristans, vergers, sidesmen, Extraordinary Ministers, parish assistants, chaplaincy assistants, Sunday school teachers, RE teachers in church schools, foundation governors of church schools, altar servers (especially, for the present purposes, adult Masters of Ceremonies), organists, choirmasters, flower-arrangers, people who read the lesson, people who hand out the hymnbooks, and so on, and on, and on.

Is that list a bit silly towards the end? Would that it were.

And especially when it comes to churchwardens, elders, circuit preachers, licensed Readers, sacristans, vergers, sidesmen, Extraordinary Ministers, and foundation governors of church schools, such are exactly the kind of people who might double up as candidates for public office in the ordinary sense, or as signatories to such candidates' nomination papers, or as campaigners in various other ways.

Their ecclesiastical service might even be mentioned, alongside their other contributions to local life, in their election literature.

Illegally, we now discover.

It is worth mentioning en passant that, while in any case nothing so unsophisticated or so strategically inept would ever be suggested in Western Europe, the importation of the occasional American practice of withholding Communion from pro-abortion Catholic politicians (although never from any other kind of dissident Catholic politician; see what I mean about unsophistication) would now be enough to have the election of their opponents declared void.