It’s a long time since vicars like me presided over a Church of England that could be described as the Conservative party at prayer. I don’t know if that’s such a bad thing for the church, which surely ought to be apolitical. But it might be deemed to have been a bad thing for Conservatives, who by most accounts appear to have idolatrously wandered so far from gospel truth that they’re about to elect a golden calf as their next leader and, by default, their prime minister.
The charge sheet against Boris Johnson is well rehearsed. He is a serial liar, philanderer and shirker. He was fired from the Times for making up quotes as a reporter, and as an opposition spokesman for lying to his leader about an affair; a spendthrift mayor of London, who relied on his deputies while he played to the gallery with vanity projects; incompetent beyond belief as foreign secretary; said to have deliberately misled the people on the post-Brexit economy; and a provocateur of racism and hate crime through his casual insults of our ethnic minorities. That’s before we get to the vacuous promises of what he’d do next with the British economy. » | George Pitcher* | Tuesday, June 18, 2019
* The Rev George Pitcher is a vicar in the Church of England and a visiting fellow at the LSE; he was secretary for public affairs to the archbishop of Canterbury, 2010-11
