Back in July the wedding of Boris and Carrie at Westminster Cathedral prompted Steerpike’s diligent colleague Robert Peston to ask a personal – but constitutionally important – question: is the PM a Catholic? As the head of government in a country with an established church, the Prime Minister and his office are intimately involved in deciding who runs the Church of England via his role in the appointment of bishops.
Some premiers of course have relished their role in the ecclesiastical process. When appointing the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1961, Harold Macmillan was said to have been urged by the incumbent Geoffrey Fisher not to appoint Michael Ramsay as his successor on the grounds that: ‘I have known him all his life – I was his headmaster at Repton.’ Macmillan shot back: ‘You may have been Dr Ramsay’s headmaster but you weren’t mine.’
Macmillan’s own successor Jim Callaghan later formalised
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