Boris, Carrie and the politics of weddings

Well! The PM’s nuptials have taken everyone unawares. And it’s hard not to feel that a small and informal wedding is better right now than something big and flashy next year, as per the excited coverage of the implications of his ‘save the date’ message to friends, faithfully passed onto the papers last week. Instead: a quiet ceremony in Westminster Cathedral, the mother church of Catholics in England and Wales.

There is some fuss about the Catholic Church solemnising the nuptials of a twice married PM and his girlfriend. But from a strictly churchy point of view there’s nothing to stop him. He was baptised in a Catholic church in New York – an unexpected element of his life story, for his mother (whose birthday was yesterday) is a Catholic. But his Catholicism didn’t quite develop, as evidenced by his being confirmed under the Anglican church at school. ‘I’m Church of England all right’ he once said.