Lord Carey of Clifton isn’t the retiring sort. He stood down as Archbishop of Canterbury ten years ago, but he wasn’t ready to end his days in quiet contemplation. At 76, he is still a public figure — more so, perhaps, than ever.
He used to be dismissed as a plodding liberal; a typically ineffectual Anglican primate. Today, he is recognised as perhaps the leading British voice of Christian conservatism. He speaks out against mass immigration, multiculturalism, gay marriage and militant secularists.
He makes headlines. He’s recently fulminated against a High Court ban on prayers at council meetings, and attacked his fellow bishops in the House of Lords for their opposition to the government’s benefits cap. ‘I think some people were a bit upset with me about that,’ he says.
Indeed they were. Bishop Stephen Lowe accused him of peddling ‘Tory dogma’. Dr Giles Fraser, the former canon chancellor of St Paul’s Cathedral, called him a ‘Thatcherite’ — a swear word in most Anglican circles — and one of ‘yesterday’s men’.
Lord Carey doesn’t look like a troublemaker or a bull-headed reactionary. When I meet him in the lobby of the Landmark hotel in Marylebone Road, he resembles other passing guests: wheeled suitcase in one hand, mobile phone in the other. (Closer inspection reveals the dog collar and pectoral cross, and a large ecclesiastical ring.)
He comes across as a gentle soul. He wants to talk about football and pop music so as not to seem out of touch. ‘If you were to look at my iPod,’ he says, rather sweetly, ‘you’d see a strange eclectic mix with Supertramp, the Carpenters … Coldplay even.’
He isn’t soft, though. The son of an East End hospital porter, he has a toughness to him.
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