Hmm. Any minute now, the Church Appointments (Repeal of Discriminatory Provision) Bill will remove the last religion-related constraints on Andy Burnham and any future prime ministers who are Catholic or Jewish, so they will in future be eligible to advise the King on the appointment of Anglican bishops.

Really, it’s hard to think that he could make any worse choices for episcopal appointments than the C of E manages all by itself

Really, it’s hard to think that he could make any worse choices for episcopal appointments than the C of E manages all by itself

Burnham, who is Britain’s first Catholic prime minister, said last week that it was ‘unacceptable’ that the last remnants of the law of 1829 prevented him from ‘performing all the functions’ of his role. 

Andy Burnham is, in his lapsed way, still a Christian, still a Catholic, even if he can’t be bothered to regularly attend mass and professes the Catholic faith in office. But is he, as a notional adviser on Anglican episcopal appointments, any worse than Sir Keir Starmer, a baptised Anglican........

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