In RL, Tony Blair did not want to convert to Roman Catholicism until he was out of office to avoid any trouble. What if he decided to ignore the contraversity and convert to Catholicism while in office?
In RL, Tony Blair did not want to convert to Roman Catholicism until he was out of office to avoid any trouble. What if he decided to ignore the contraversity and convert to Catholicism while in office?
*Ignorant Canuckian* Why would it be illegal for a Catholic to be PM? Granted it might be awkward for a Catholic to appoint Anglican bishops and the Archbishop of Canterbury, but is there anything actually illegal about it? IIRC a UK member once said that Lab would have more issues with this than the Tories...
The Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 provided, among other things, that Catholics could sit and vote in either House of Parliament provided that they took, instead of the oaths of supremacy, allegiance and abjuration, a new inoffensively phrased oath of allegiance. While there is no longer any statutory bar on Roman Catholics becoming Prime Minister, there are issues arising from advice on ecclesiastical preferment that is given by the Prime Minister to the Crown. Special arrangements would have to be made to ensure that he or she did not advise the Crown directly or indirectly on Church of England appointments, doing so under the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 remains a “high misdemeanour”. This particular aspect of Prime Ministerial duties could be delegated to another minister not similarly barred.
I'm surprised that hasn't been amended given how much Wilson and Blair legislated on social policy.
It's perfectly legal for a catholic to be PM. The issue of advising the monarch as to who should be appointed as a Bishop could be resolved by handing that responsibility to the Archbishop of Canterbury (where it should lie anyway in my opinion). Advise on who should be Archbishop of Canterbury could be handed to the General Synod
I'd imagine the PM would simply tell the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Church of England to just get on with running their own church. It might however set the wheels of a complete disestablishment in motion, which wouldn't really change much.
As I said above, in the event of there being a Roman Catholic or Jewish Prime Minister the duty would simply pass to the Lord Chancellor (assuming he was not similarly barred - if so, it would probably pass along the Great Officers of State to the highest one able. At the moment, this would be the Lord President of the Council - Nick Clegg: an atheist, but as such, not barred from making ecclesiastical appointments). The only thing which makes this somewhat unclear is that it has never had to be tested, but this is the presumed constitutional process.
Considering the status of Church of England, I'm pretty sure that Britain doesn't have separation of church and state.Isn't this why there's a separation between state and church? I don't think the public would be happy to know you have to be religion x to be elected. What's religion got to do with politics?
It has actually come up before, but with nonconformist prime ministers rather than Catholic ones (though the principle is the same). The usual procedure is that the prime minister delegates the job to a senior Anglican in the cabinet (though it's not compulsory - Mrs Thatcher is a Methodist, am I'm pretty sure she handled this herself).
Disraeli was ethnically Jewish, but he was Anglican for his entire adult life.Since we've already had a Jewish PM, I don't see why a Catholic PM should lead to disestablishment of the CoE.
Since we've already had a Jewish PM, I don't see why a Catholic PM should lead to disestablishment of the CoE.