Catholic Liberal Democrat peer Shirley Williams, one of the “Gang of Four” rebel MPs to abandon Labour and form the Social Democratic Party in 1981, will step down from the House of Lords in the New Year after 50 years in politics. Baroness Williams, 85, was a Labour cabinet minister in the 1970s, before forming the successful SDP and becoming its first member. A practising Catholic since the age of 18, Williams wrote in God and Caesar (2003) on religion and politics: “I go to