The state church clerics who are given seats in the House of Lords “offer a unique and varied spiritual perspective” according to a speaker who recently addressed the House of Commons.
The speaker also referred approvingly to the ways in which the Anglican Church is intertwined with the executive and legislature.
You might imagine that the speaker was a member of the Conservative or Reform parties.
But according to the National Secular Society it was in fact Jim Mahon, the Labour Party’s minister for local government who was defending undemocratic religious privilege.
Mr. Mahon reassured Parliament of the importance of the minority and scandal plagued Church of England, rather then calling for disestablishment of the church and the freeing of parliament from its unelected and anti-democratic legislators.