A few weeks ago, Prime Minister Boris Johnson was shirty with me when I asked him whether he was now a practising Roman Catholic, having recently been married to Carrie Symonds at Westminster Cathedral. His answer was ‘I don’t discuss these deep issues. Certainly not with you.’
The question may be ‘deep’, as he says, but it is also – as a senior minister has reminded me – an intensely practical one and relevant to his duties as Prime Minister. Because under the British constitution:
1. The Prime Minister’s appointments secretary has an advisory role in the appointment of all bishops
2. The chair of the commission that nominates an archbishop is chaired by a lay person selected by the prime minister
He speculates that Mr Johnson would like to have a voice in preventing Welby being replaced with someone he would see as another irksome lefty
3. The PM eventually picks a bishop or archbishop from a short list of two (though except in exceptional circumstances, the PM accepts the preferred candidate of the commission).
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