Mr Speaker 'guides' Labour MPs on Church of England equality

MPs are queuing up in a concerted effort to impose equality upon the Church of England. Leading their ranks are Labour's Ben Bradshaw and Chris Bryant, who both doubtless have a further equality agenda in mind, just a little beyond the current vexatious one relating to episcopal gender.

This development is  concerning, not least because (unlike some other Christian denominations) the Church of England has its own democratic structures for debating change and enacting legislation, and it's not even as if all of those who voted against the recent proposal are opposed in principle to women bishops: quite a few were manifestly unhappy with the wording of the legislation put before them, which both sustained anti-women discrimination and merely exhorted 'respect' for the traditionalists. It was a bit of a fudge, not to say a dog's breakfast.

But, in the myopic world of Westminster, it was simply and straightforwardly a vote against women bishops, and this is offensive for it breaches equality law; in particular, it reserves 26 places in the House of Lords exclusively for men, and we can't be having that, can we? And so the Prime Minister said he would 'look closely' at what Parliament might do, and then ranted that the Synod should 'get on with it' and 'get with the programme'.

The programme, presumably, being the equality agenda.

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