Why are bishops meddling in the Internal Market Bill?

What century is it? I ask because, this morning, the five most senior bishops in the country publicly rebuked our democratically elected government and effectively called on the unelected peers of the House of Lords to rebel against a Bill passed by the House of Commons. Bishops throwing their spiritual weight around to try to force political representatives to change course? I feel like I’ve just stepped out of a time machine into the 15th century.

In a letter published in the Financial Times today, the Archbishops of Canterbury, York, Wales and Armagh, as well as the Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church, laid into the Internal Market Bill. As the Bill arrives in the Lords to be pored over by people none of us voted for — the madness of it! — these meddling men of the cloth have made their feelings known. The Bill will have terrible ‘moral, as well as political and legal, consequences’, they decree.