With Labour to the left of them and Reform overtaking on the right, Kemi Badenoch’s Conservatives have found yet another figure to concentrate their firepower on – William Gladstone.
The Tories have indicated that they might be planning to overturn the disestablishment of the Church in Ireland in 1871, a signature achievement of the famously austere Victorian prime minister.
Last month, the shadow foreign affairs minister Andrew Rosindell wrote to cabinet office minister Nick Thomas-Symonds, demanding to know “if his department will take steps to re-establish the Church of Ireland as the established church of Northern Ireland”.
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Alas for Rosindell, Thomas-Symonds has now written back to say that “the United Kingdom has two established churches, the Church of England and the Church of Scotland. The church was disestablished in Ireland in 1871 and in Wales in 1920.
“There are no plans to change the current arrangements.”
It’s only the latest occasion on which the MP for Romford has dipped his toe into Irish constitutional niceties. Earlier this year he used a speech in the Commons to demand that the Irish Republic join the Commonwealth, a call its government has curiously so far refused to heed (in case they were wondering, his qualification for delving into such matters was that “St Patrick’s day is my birthday, so it is a special day for me”).
Still, good to know that Badenoch’s party is laser-focused on the issues that matter to the electorate!
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