The country is going through the most serious political crisis since the Second World War, yet hardly a peep has come from the direction of the nation’s religious leaders.

The country is going through the most serious political crisis since the Second World War, yet hardly a peep has come from the direction of the nation’s religious leaders. It is as if church leaders are reciprocating the famous remark of Tony Blair’s spokesman “We don’t do God” with the response, “Then we don’t do politics.”

Why the silence? Why do the bishops not have the courage to say loud and clear, as Pope Francis has done, that the European Union is a great moral vision but one that needs improving? That solidarity with Europe is a moral duty, and turning one’s back on it is wrong? That it is forbidden to play political games with the national interest?

Brexit is not the only issue on the political agenda. What about poverty, say, and the fact that four million children are being brought up – in the world’s fifth largest economy – below the official poverty line? What a heap of misery is hidden by that statistic. There is one inescapable explanation. Though wages are higher than they otherwise would have been without the minimum wage, many people are still not being paid sufficiently for the work they do. The state steps in to raise incomes to a less intolerable level: that, at least, is what the new universal credit system is supposed to do. But that is not the answer.

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