Dear Gabriel,

So the moment had actually arrived. I had my question to the Deputy Prime Minister. For years we have been campaigning, ten-minute rule bills, motions, the Government has announced that it is to remove one of the last remaining bits of discrimination against Roman Catholics dating from the Act of Settlement.

I got my question in without incident. This is the way when we actually arrive somewhere it’s all very easy and obvious. The point I was making that in ‘modern’ Britain who can’t actually stop anyone even a head of state doing any job whatever their religion or indeed lack of it.

But doesn’t this run against our view in the book we published, ‘The Nation That Forgot God’, that the decline of organised religion is harmful. But no one noticed or perhaps they just didn’t care.