Paul Dolan contrasts Boris Johnson’s faith with Joe Biden’s, while Zaki Cooper says that religion should inspire but not dictate an individual’s political agenda
I suspect that many left-leaning Roman Catholics regard the fact that Boris Johnson is Britain’s first Catholic prime minister as more a matter of regret than pride, and certainly not “a watershed moment” for the nation’s Catholics, as Catherine Pepinster suggests (A Catholic prime minister in No 10 is a watershed moment, 11 June).
Nor was this moment entirely unpredictable. Some of the most prominent Tory Brexiters – Bill Cash, Iain Duncan Smith and Jacob Rees-Mogg – are also fellow Catholics, while the days of the Church of England being effectively the Conservative party at prayer, while Labour was seen as the preference of Irish Catholic working-class communities, have long passed. In terms of electoral allegiance, Catholics have been steadily deserting the Labour party, as they advance in educational attainment, employment income and influence among the right.