Tories and the Church: the 30-year war continues

Here are some observations from the ‘incendiary’ letter from the House of Bishops that has upset the Tories so much.

‘Our electoral system often means that the outcomes turn on a very small group of people within the overall electorate. Greater social mobility and the erosion of old loyalties to place or class mean that all the parties struggle to maintain their loyal core of voters whilst reaching out to those who might yet be swayed their way. The result is that any capacious political vision is stifled.’

‘Instead, parties generate policies targeted at specific demographic groupings, fashioned by expediency rather than vision or even consistency. The art, or science, of targeting policies to tightly-defined, electoral groups has become highly-sophisticated – but the idea that politics is about satisfying the wants of distinct groups so as to win their votes has prevented our politics from rising above a kind of Dutch auction.