The Prince of Wales seeks to assure us that, as a friend puts into his mouth, ‘I might not be at church every day, but I believe in it.’ That formulation does not necessarily mean he believes in God or the doctrines of the Church of England. All it means is that he believes in the efficacy of the C of E and will dutifully fulfil his future role as its Supreme Governor. Actually, that is all we need to know. His great Tudor predecessor said she did not want to ‘make windows into men’s souls’; even kings are only men. The important thing, from a constitutional as opposed to a spiritual point of view, is that he acts the part with good grace, which he surely will. Whether he does so by divine grace poured into his heart is a question above all our pay grades. However, it is an interesting fact that George VI, Elizabeth II and the present King were/are all, in their different ways, serious Christians. And Edward VIII, who wasn’t, was a menace. ‘Think of pouring all those sacred words into a vacuum,’ lamented Archbishop Cosmo Lang, before the Abdication spared him that agony. When Prince William attended the installation of the new Archbishop on Wednesday, he was positioning himself appropriately.

Without proper evidence, I feel the voters’ mood is changing. For some years, it has been energetically angry, a feeling relieved only for about a month in 2024 before it became clear that the new Labour government had no idea what to do. Now I think it is........

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