Proroguing Parliament: how “cavalier disregard” endangers democracy

The words have nothing to do with each other, of course. To prorogue is to ask for a deferment (pro + rogare). It has nothing to do with roguery. At least, not etymologically.

And yet Boris Johnson’s decision to prorogue Parliament feels to many of us to be the action of a rogue. At a stroke it delivers all power to the executive, unchallenged by Parliament. Select committees cannot meet, so ministers are not held to account anywhere for their actions. At a time of national crisis, the elected members who represent us in Parliament are rendered voiceless. All formal debate is stifled at a blow. To silence Parliament at such a time like this is nothing short of a shocking undermining of democracy. 

I’m not going to rehearse the arguments here. I’m not a constitutional historian or an expert on parliamentary process. It may well turn out that to prorogue Parliament is perfectly legal. That is for the lawyers now to determine under judicial review. No doubt The Queen was advised that she could safely accede to the Prime Minister’s request, indeed, that she had no alternative.

But legality is not the real point here. It’s whether the decision to prorogue is ethical, judicious and wise. And whether it’s free of the charge of duplicity, given that a Queen’s Speech does not require proroguing for more than a few days. Members of Mr Johnson’s cabinet are on record as having said during the Conservative leadership contest that they could not support suspending Parliament in order to achieve Brexit by 31 October. No one believes (whatever some may say) that curtailing the Brexit debate in Parliament does not lie at the heart of this otherwise needless decision. 

I don’t think the British public will be fooled by it, at least not for long. Elected members from all opposition parties, always jealous for their parliamentary privileges, are outraged. A growing chorus of voices in the Conservative party itself is expressing alarm and dissent. Others are keeping silent, perhaps embarrassed by a decision that leaves them deeply conflicted. 

My own MP here in Hexham constituency, Guy Opperman, is perhaps one of these. He voted Remain in the referendum, and represents a constituency that also voted Remain by a small majority. But about proroguing Parliament, his Twitter feed has said nothing so far. So I challenged him in a tweet this morning. I asked: “Does @GuyOpperman believe that: 1 it’s the right thing to do because it will deliver #Brexit, ‘do or die’? 2 It’s the wrong thing to do because it subverts parliamentary sovereignty? Or 3 it’s a regrettable act, but necessary to concentrate minds?” 

Perhaps Mr Opperman’s media advisers are telling him to say nothing. Maybe personal integrity and party loyalty pull in opposite directions. No loyal MP goes off-message without considerable provocation. But possibly his silence is conveying precisely the message that his democratic one-nation principles are being placed under considerable strain by his leader’s actions. Who can say? I’m trying to put the best interpretation on his silence, but I’m conjecturing. I’ve written personally to him to express my dismay. I look forward to his reply. He is more than welcome to comment on this blog too. This is not a time to keep quiet about these deeply troubling developments. Elected members are there to engage. Interrogating their words and actions is part of what it means to be a citizen.

Our parliamentary system is the cornerstone of the nation’s governance. It’s why so much was made of the sovereignty of Parliament during the referendum campaign. I did not think that the Brexiters’ rallying cry “take back control!” would mean an assault by the executive on Parliament itself. This should be a matter of the utmost concern to all parliamentarians in both Houses, and to those for whom they speak, either as their directly elected representatives or as those charged with the scrutiny of legislation that affects the people of this nation.

Which brings me to offer one final observation. I think that the prorogation of Parliament puts the Church of England bishops in the House of Lords in a particularly difficult position. They sit in Parliament to share in the guardianship of the nation’s spiritual, moral and political health. They are therefore as much the champions of our democratic freedoms as everyone else in the two Houses. As the spokesmen and women of the Established Church of England, are they not bound to deplore this erosion of parliamentary democracy at a time of crisis in the strongest possible terms? Will they not be compelled to protest against prorogation out of their concern for the wellbeing of the people towards whom they have a duty of care?

A number of bishops published an open letter earlier this week about the consequences of a No Deal Brexit. It was a good piece of writing that deserves careful study. It’s unfortunate that it was overshadowed by the simultaneous announcement of the prorogation of Parliament. But uncannily, a paragraph of their text spoke directly into the big news that was breaking that day. They said: “The sovereignty of Parliament is not just an empty term. It is based on institutions to be honoured and respected: our democracy is endangered by cavalier disregard for these.”

The bishops could hardly have known how prescient these words would turn out to be. Honour and respect are precisely what are lacking in the Prime Minister’s cynical decision to suspend parliamentary process. Cavalier disregard is precisely how to describe this act of chicanery. 

I’m delighted that the bishops have found their voice after so long (though I’m wondering why not all the Diocesan bishops signed the letter). My question now is, how are they going to make sure that the questions they pose in their letter, especially in the paragraph I’ve quoted, are heard by those who need to pay attention? It seems to me that the bishops have no option but to speak further about honouring and respecting our democratic institutions, and to point out in no uncertain terms how we will not, as a church and as a nation, tolerate cavalier disregard for them. 

The question, as I’ve said, is not whether prorogation is against the letter of the law. Rather, it’s that it is utterly opposed to the spirit of the hard-won legislation that guarantees democracy in our country. We urge the bishops, along with their fellow peers and elected members, not to concede this fundamental point. As good parliamentarians, the bishops must bear witness in the House of Lords. And they must do this at the earliest possible opportunity. 

********
Update at 1758 today, 30 August: Guy Opperman MP has now blogged about this. 

The Next Prime Minister: why character matters

This post is not about Boris Johnson. Well, not directly.

But recent events have posed sharp questions for those who are standing as candidates to become the next prime minister, and for the electors who will decide. Does it matter what kind of person you are, or only what policies you promote? Is your private life relevant to your public role, or should we mind our own business when it comes to salacious headlines about the personal conduct of people in prominent leadership positions?

I have a lot of sympathy with the idea that we have a right to a private life. The intrusion of print and broadcast media into our privacy is in many ways a distasteful thing, fuelled as it often is by a deafening clamour of online voices. I've spent my working life in public roles as an ordained priest in the Church of England. In no way is this comparable to being a politician, though when you are a cathedral dean, you necessarily find yourself the focus of public attention. It’s not always welcome. For example, a few years ago I found myself embroiled in a contentious debate about a local football manager who had (in my and many people's opinion) espoused a version of fascism. I protested that football supplies key role models to the young and fascism ought not to feature among them. I was subjected to shedloads of abuse from people who cared only about their club's footballing success. My personal origins (regarding my German-Jewish mother) were invoked in a stream of abusive forum comments I was foolish enough to look at. It was uncomfortable to say the least even though I had not said or done anything I later regretted.

Yet it seems to me that when you take up a leadership role in public life, you do in an important way renounce the privileges of a private life most people take for granted. Let me speak about the world I know best, the Church of England. At this time of year, men and women are being ordained across the country. I shall be speaking to a group of them in a week's time. The ordination season is always a joyful, but also a solemn, thought-provoking time not only for the candidates themselves but for the whole church. It asks us reflect on the kind of public ministry that is needed in today's and tomorrow's church if it is to flourish and serve the nation and its peoples as well as it can.

In the ordination service the Bishop asks this question of the candidates. Will you endeavour to fashion your own life and that of your household according to the way of Christ, that you may be a pattern and example to Christ's people? To some, that could feel intrusive. What right has the church to ask this? What has my personal life, still more that of my household, got to do with my fitness to lead and serve in the church? Surely that is purely a matter of charism, aptitude and skill?

Well, not entirely. What the ordinal is getting at is the exemplary nature of leadership. As all the textbooks tell us nowadays, good leadership is about much more than strategic aims and smart objectives. It's as much about what you are as what you do and how you perform. It pays equal attention to how you embody and live out the values of your institution to those towards whom you have the responsibility of oversight. Words like virtue and character are used a lot. Some senior leaders in politics and business have said that they keep a copy of The Rule of St Benedict on their desks to remind them what this great book from 1500 years ago teaches about the virtues needed in a good leader such as the abbot of the monastery.

The fact is that people (not just church people) regard clergy as "exemplary" Christians and human beings. To the public, it's not simply what priests and bishops say but what they do that counts. We may balk at that, protest that clergy are ordinary men and women who as fragile and broken as everyone else. The last thing we should do is put them on pedestals. And of course, that's right. Except that it ignores the dynamic that is going on when leaders hold public office. As soon as they step into an official role, they attract projections and transferences that invest them with hopes and expectations that can be almost numinous, invested with a kind of sacred quality.

I preached at an ordination last year on John the Baptist's words "I am not the Messiah" and said I'd have them emblazoned on the robes of every new clergy man or woman! But you can't deal with messianic projections so easily. Unconsciously people want leaders to be their messiah. And as far as clergy are concerned, they certainly want the ordained to be model Christians, "a pattern and example" whom they can emulate. So when clergy fail by catastrophically undermining the gospel values they stand for, it is shocking. Priests who abuse children, for example.

Something like this is going to be true of leaders in every institution - public, private or voluntary. And where an organisation's values feature prominently in its public presentation of itself, its leaders are bound to be subject to particular scrutiny. This is where churches and political parties perhaps have something in common because they are value-driven. Political leaders are looked to as much for their values and personal authenticity as for strategic direction and policy-making. This doesn't mean they won't fall below their party's standards from time to time. But when they do in non-trivial ways, that becomes a matter of legitimate public concern. Is this person all they say they are? Are they as trustworthy in their personal life as in their public role? Is there a consistency of values and behaviour across the whole of their persona?

I can only say that these questions have been central to my self-understanding as a priest in my years of public ministry. I have made mistakes, let people down, disappointed their proper expectations of what a priest should be, fallen short of my own standards for my personal as well as my public life. In some ways, letting myself down is harder than anything else as I look back - not being consistently my best self in that "inner room" as Jesus calls it, the place where people can't see who and what I truly am. I have tried (and am still trying) to learn that in some respects, what goes on in secret really is the business of the people I've been called to serve and lead. I don’t mean we should condone nosiness or prurience: there is a line to be drawn between what it’s appropriate for people to know about my personal or family life and what it isn’t. But if others have a legitimate concern about the consistency of my professional and personal life when measured against values I publicly represent, that isn’t prurience. That’s caring for the church’s welfare - and mine too.

Thinking about the election of the next prime minster, I recently tweeted the seven Nolan Principles of Public Life. This isn't the first time I've mentioned them in my blog. The government website tells us that "the 7 principles of public life apply to anyone who works as a public office-holder. This includes people who are elected or appointed to public office, nationally and locally. The principles also apply to all those in other sectors that deliver public services.They were first set out by Lord Nolan in 1995 and they are included in the Ministerial code".

The Principles (which I think are worth a capital letter even if the website doesn't) are: selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and leadership. These are the seven standards - maybe we should call them virtues - to which everyone in public life should aspire. They set out what we should properly expect of those who undertake public roles. In public sector organisations leaders are required to sign up to them formally. I wonder why we don't ask church leaders to do the same. Because they describe behaviours as well as aspirations, they seem to me to apply to the personal as well as the professional "character" of leaders. In ancient Greek, a character was literally a text or design that was stamped on wax, thus transmitting the essential quality of the original pattern. It's a good metaphor of the way we are formed (or should be) by the values and virtues of the institutions we belong to and lead.

Which is why it's relevant to ask the candidates for one of the highest offices in the land whether they are committed to these Principles. In an article in today's Observer, Simon Tisdall draws on David Miliband's Fulbright Lecture to ask why world leaders these days can get away with lying with impunity. Do we in the UK not want our own leadership to be free of mendacity, to believe that truth is fundamental to good leadership, not merely truth about facts (though that is important) but truth-seeking and truth-telling as essential personal qualities? That's what's at stake in this election.

And when the dramas of someone's personal life hit the headlines, we need to ask what it means to have signed up to values like integrity, openness and honesty? Electors have a right to know about the character of the candidates who are competing for their votes. They have a right to explore whether their professional and personal ethics are rooted in the same set of values. You shouldn't trumpet "family values" if you are cavalier in the way you treat your own family. Questions at hustings about these things shouldn't be shouted down. We need to be assured that the man who will lead this nation is free of hypocrisy, and displays the qualities that make him worthy of our confidence. He needs to be an exemplary human being whom we can respect, emulate and even admire.

Perhaps integrity is the controlling value of the seven Principles. It has the connotations of completeness where disparate parts are brought together, integrated into a single whole. Beati quorum via integra est says the Latin translation of the opening verse of Psalm 119, "Happy are those whose way is pure". Purity means being "single-pointed", having one focus for life in all its aspects. It's not a matter of being a perfect leader, still less a messianic one. What's required is consistency in anyone who aspires to leadership, to be emotionally intelligent, self-aware enough to be in touch with his own humanity with all its flaws. We need him to be integrated, to be one single person, not two or more depending on the audience.

We need him to be good enough to trust.

Brexit: The Prime Minister Speaks

So Mrs May has come back from Salzburg empty-handed.

Brexit-watchers can hardly be surprised. The Northern Ireland border was always going to be a tough challenge if the Good Friday Agreement was going to be honoured. As was finding a modus vivendi with the other 27 EU nations unless it was going to be on the basis of the Single Market and Customs Union. The impossibility of squaring the circle is the right metaphor. You can find as good a match as you want, and you can get closer and closer an infinite number of times. But you can never make the circumferences or areas exactly equal. It all comes down to π.

Salzburg is Mozart's birthplace. Its name literally means the Castle of Salt. Well, the EU leadership has certainly gone through the PM's Chequers proposals like a dose of salts. How she must have wished for some Mozartian Magic Flute to come to her rescue, confer wisdom, protect her against her foes, lead her into the right path! Instead, negotiations on these two critical points have reached an impasse. The EU is clearly in no mood to bend to her wishes. So she has no room to manoeuvre unless she compromises on both of them.  And as she keeps reminding us, there is no Plan B other than to crash out of the European Union with no deal.

The Prime Minister has just spoken to the nation. The robust tone was consistent throughout her short speech, the Leitmotif being "we cannot accept...". Some of her red lines will find ready agreement across the nation, such as "we cannot accept the break-up of the United Kingdom". Of course not. But as everyone can now see, this is a non-trivial risk for the Union, especially those who live and work in Northern Ireland. I don't suppose many people foresaw this when they voted Leave in 2016. Like the false prophets in Jeremiah, the cry was "peace, peace, where there is no peace". And the cavalier way some leading proponents of Brexit are ready to treat the Good Friday Agreement is both breathtaking, and desperately sad.

But what about her opening "we cannot accept"? She said today, "we cannot accept anything that does not respect the result of the referendum". This begs so many big questions, all of which have been fully rehearsed in the two years the nation has been debating the consequences of the vote. I don't want to plough in well-worn furrows. We were reminded ad nauseam by Brexiters that Parliament is sovereign, and this includes its powers to rescind what has been decided in the past - which is precisely why the referendum and Parliamentary endorsement of it was to reverse the decision first made by the nation in 1975 to confirm our membership of the EU (with the strong support of the Daily Mail - newspapers can change their minds too!).

Add to that the clear proviso that the referendum was advisory to Parliament, and it really won't do lamely to appeal to the referendum result as if it were set in stone like "the laws of the Medes and Persians that can never be revoked". This is immature politics that devalues the intelligence of voting people and infantilises them. In a democratic society, we are free to change our minds, and frequently do at general elections. As I've said, the second EU vote was itself a change of mind following the first.

There's one more issue here, and I recall writing about it in an earlier blog. We know that the majority of elected members in Parliament were for Remain. Not just by a margin of a few percent like the UK electors, but a really significant majority. The point is this. If these MPs believed in 2016 that it was in the interests of the UK to stay in the European Union, what changed with the referendum result? Remainer MPs should be principled enough not to sacrifice their convictions on the altar of a public vote, especially when it is as close as the result was two years ago. They are not delegates who must vote as instructed by their constituencies. They are independent representatives who, having regard for the views of their constituents, nevertheless are free to vote, and indeed must always vote, in accordance with what their conscience tells them is in the national interest, without fear or favour.

What has happened in Parliament that even our Prime Minister, who is undoubtedly a woman to whom principle and conscience are important, is enslaved to this theory that the referendum result is inviolable and sacrosanct? Yes of course, to act with integrity, to follow principle and your own conscience in the face of fierce and loud opposition does take courage. It is fatally easy to be compromised when the stakes are so high and the pressures very great. And who appreciates the demands that are placed upon political leaders in times like these? I'm not at all defending the PM's approach to Brexit when I say that we can all feel for her in these ordeals she faces, not only among her EU colleagues, but (especially, I think) the brutal EU-psychodramas that the Conservative Party has enjoyed acting out for so many decades now. "Bastards", John Major called the far-right Tories when it came to Maastricht. You get the point.

I'm not expecting the PM to read this. But if by chance she were to, here's what I'd want to say to her.

1. None of this fiasco was of your making. You were landed with this poisoned chalice by your predecessor. Having promised he would see the consequences of the referendum through, he promptly walked away from his duty. I wonder how he can sleep at night.

2. Most of us do not want Brexit to be a disaster for the nation. We want you to succeed in your negotiations, not just to get the best deal for Britain, but what is best for Europe too, in the spirit of friendship, understanding and peace-building that is why this EU family exists in the first place. We want to go on being friends, partners and allies of the EU27. To crash out would sour relationships that are immensely important not only to our immediate neighbours and ourselves, but geopolitically too.

3. Don't underestimate how big a loss the UK's leaving the EU will be to the twenty-seven. It's not just the four freedoms or our payments into its budget. It's about the real and deep partnerships that have been so carefully built up across areas such as security, science, culture, environmental care and medicine as well. EU leaders are not punishing Britain for leaving, but they are sad about it, and that helps to explain some of the tough rhetoric coming out of Brussels. The parting of friends is always painful, and we are seeing this being acted out as we watch.

4. Please don't make our nation the laughing-stock of Europe and the world. What happened at Salzburg was humiliating, not just for you personally but for all of us who love our country and count ourselves fortunate to be British. Negotiation is what grown-up people do when things get tough. Whatever comes of Brexit, it needs to be with our dignity intact. I'm very much afraid that we have lost stature in the world during these past two years. Maybe that's good for a nation, not to think of itself more highly than it ought to think. But if it's respect that we've forfeited, shouldn't that make us think carefully about the course we've embarked on? I hope so.

5. Please, please, consider it possible that you may be mistaken about a People's Vote. I am no enthusiast for referenda in a representative democracy, but once that genie is let out of the bottle, you can't put it back again. I think the cry for a third referendum (not the second - that's what 2016 was) will become unassailable in the coming months. Please, please, consider letting the nation, especially its young who were disenfranchised in 2016, speak once more, with the option of remaining in the EU on the same terms as we currently enjoy. After all, if Brexit is really what the UK wants, then Brexiters have nothing to fear from going round the tracks in the light of what we have all learned in the last two years. Minds change, not because people are fickle or wayward, but because circumstances change and new evidence emerges. Previously unknown information, newly assessed risks, clearer perceptions of what Brexit would actually mean, all this comes from the intensive scrutiny Brexit has been subjected to in the last 27 months. Such a triage is a good thing. I'm sure you welcome it. I believe you have the courage to ask the nation in a People's Vote what it now believes about its future in the light of what it now knows. Don't be afraid.

6. It may be small comfort, but I want to assure you that the prayers of people of all faiths are with you. And the thoughts of many more.

Not a Good Week

It's easy to love your country when things are going well. Later today there will be an outburst of patriotic pride in either France or Croatia. What if England had won the World Cup? How Mrs May must have longed for some good news to mitigate the effects of her septimana horribilis. Anything to make us proud to be British once again.

I admit I'm struggling with my patriotic duty right now. Not with the concept, for I'm clear that we ought to love our country not because it's better than anyone else's, but because it's ours, it's where we live and belong. (Just as we ought to love our county or city, our village, neighbourhood or town - belonging ro our own "place" should engender a sense of gratitude and pride and concern for its welfare. In classical thought, this attitude was called pietas, the recognition of what we owe to the dust that bore us, shaped us and made us aware, to echo Rupert Brooke's great poem "The Soldier".)

No, it's not the idea of patriotism that worries me, but how hard it is to put it into practice at times. I'm thinking of occasions when you have to say, patriotic love is not because of but in spite of - in spite of the follies being committed in our name, in spite of the disregard for moderation and common sense that is being shown, despite the cavalier attitude being taken by our leaders to the future welfare of the nation.

Yes, it's back to Brexit of course, and how the current government is (not) managing it. This past week has thrown our national dilemma into sharp relief. First came the Chequers agreement that at first looked like a welcome step back from a hard Brexit or from a fatal crashing out of the EU altogether. For a few hours, the cabinet centre held. But not for long. Two big resignations later and it's clear that "things fall apart". The administration is all at sea (just as the UK will be, shorn of its European moorings). Even magical thinking can't save the Tory party from polarising and possibly breaking its back on the shoals of Brexit.

Then, when things could hardly get worse, President Donald Trump landed on our shores. It was an ill-fated invitation if ever there was one, hardly calculated to raise the Prime Minister's standing in the world and enhance her dignity. His insulting Sun interview disparaging her leadership and rubbishing her approach to Brexit was beyond belief. When I read it, I felt for Mrs May on the point of welcoming a visiting head of state and going the second mile in showing the courtesies due to the so-called leader of the free world. But I have to say that she brought it on herself. Her rush to invite him in the first place was already something to wonder at. The sight of her dressed like a woman from The Handmaid's Tale holding Mr Trump's hand was a toe-curling sign of submission to a domineering, capricious and cruel man. These are images we shan't quickly forget. It felt pitiful and demeaning. And no emollient words later on about the "higher than special" relationship could make up for it.

It's clear that Mr Trump despises not only NATO and the European Union, but the whole consensus on which western politics has been constructed since the last war. Never mind our damaged pride - we must live with that (and that may be good for us - being humbled often is). Far more important is what we have learned in the past few days. It's that this is a profoundly dangerous moment for the liberal democracies of our world (and that includes the USA). Mr Trump's fickle behaviour on his European tour - saying one thing to The Sun, then doing a U-turn hours later, shows that he is not a man we can safely trust. Is it a case of agreeing with the last person you spoke to? If so, his lack of stability and reliability is deeply worrying. If you don't know where you are with your closest ally, can he be said to be an ally any longer? Today the EU is lumped together with China and Russia as a "foe" of America. A leader in today's Observer asks: “Hooking our national fortunes to this caricature of a president & any benevolence he may or may not choose to show Britain” - is this what we really want?

This visit that has so humiliated our country has had the effect of throwing Brexit into sharp relief. We can now see it for what it is in the full light of day. The truth is that by "taking back control", we shall be getting far, far more than we bargained for. We shall be on our own in an ocean of indifference to our fate. The EU will not feel it owes us any favours after what the UK has put it through both before and after the referendum. The USA has demonstrated that these islands of ours are of little consequence as it seeks to "put America first". We shall no longer have the global reach and influence we once had when we pooled our sovereignty with our friends and allies in the European Union. We get the worst of all possible worlds. The much scorned Project Fear was right all along.

What our nation is on the point of throwing away beggars belief. I never had the UK down as reckless in its actions. But recklessness is the word that comes to mind now when it comes to Britain's standing in the world and how others see us. And not the least of it comes down to many of those elected members who warned all along that Brexit would expose us to dangers we needed to heed. Among these is the Prime Minister who voted Remain in 2016. If she and her fellow Remainer MPs thought then that it was in the best interests of the nation to stay in the EU, their conviction cannot overnight have been negated by a popular vote. Or if it has been, what do representative government let alone integrity and principle matter any more? To the questions we asked during the referendum campaign - What is prudent? What makes for our flourishing? What holds out the best promise of peace and justice and environmental care in our continent and beyond? - the answers given then by Remainer MPs cannot have changed just because a narrow majority claimed to express "the will of the people". (Don't let's get started on the gross folly of allowing huge constitutional change on the flimsy basis of a simple majority vote. In my view, David Cameron has more to answer for in his leadership of the nation than any PM since Anthony Eden.)

This is why my patriotic love of country is under strain at the moment, why it's in spite of rather than because of. I love Britain for many reasons, among which three stand out. First, its instinct for fairness and toleration, its temperamental stability and its innate common-sense. Second, its traditions of generosity, hospitality and welcome to incomers and refugees (but for which, as I've often said, I wouldn't be here today, my mother being an asylum seeker who found sanctuary in Britain during the Nazi era). And third, its outward-facing openness to peoples beyond its borders, its belief in maintaining strong connections across the world through supra-national bodies like the Commonwealth and the EU. All these virtues are under threat at present. In their place our great nation is turning into an inward-looking, self-interested, isolationist, bad-tempered archipelago feuding with itself while all the while losing its way when it comes to finding its place in the modern world and exercising lasting global influence.

All of which is beyond sad. For the first time in my life, I don't feel at home in this country as it is fast becoming. I am an exile in my own land, out of sympathy with the prevailing mores that turn their back on the alliances that make for our health and strength and greatness as a nation. Make no mistake: Brexit will enfeeble us, rob us of our influence, weaken our ability to make a difference in the world. From what I've seen and heard, there are a fair number of us who feel the same way, maybe over half the electorate now. Which is why the British public must be allowed a vote on the final Brexit deal that is agreed, including the option to remain within the EU. The best we can hope for is that we recover quickly from this fit of craziness that has overtaken us. If not, I fear for my children and grandchildren and the country we shall have bequeathed to them when we are gone.

No, it has not been the best of weeks. But nil desperandum. It looked pretty bleak in 1940. God can help us find our true selves again, and deliver us from the threats that ambush us. Onwards and upwards as they say. Never lose heart. Kyrie eleison.

**I have another blog exploring patriotism in relation to Brexit: follow this link.

Dear Prime Minister: an open letter

Dear Prime Minister

I've sympathised with you during this past week. You've been through the kind of ordeal familiar to most leaders where a cloud no more than the size of a man's hand suddenly becomes a mighty storm. You were right to strike a contrite note in your speech. Yes, it would have been so much better if you had been frank with us from the outset. I believe your instincts are for honesty, and it's such a pity that you seem to have been advised otherwise to begin with. Evasiveness is never a good tactic. But it's never too late to say sorry and you did. Thank you.

However, my overriding concern today is not your own political fortunes but the coming EU Referendum. I'm very much afraid that you may have handed the Leave campaign a gift they could never have expected. "This walks straight into every Eurosceptic’s dream. It may be unfair on David Cameron. But it is very, very dangerous” Matthew Parris has written. Because if the public's view of you has changed (and it's only an if - the coming days will tell) and it's not so inclined to trust you about your personal finances, why should they trust you when it comes to the European Union?

I write as a convinced European who believes like you that this country will be far better off within the EU than outside it. And I don't just mean economically or in terms of defence, security and geopolitics. I mean what the UK has to bring to the EU as one of its leading nations committed to the common good as well as our own. It would be nightmare for me, and many like me, to wake up on 24 June to find that we had walked away from the family of peoples to whom we naturally belong.

Here's where I'm afraid you have unwittingly been the goose that has laid Brexit a golden egg. As today's Observer says, "voters may decide to forget the case for the European Union and engage in the altogether more satisfying activity of kicking out David Cameron." I hope that comment proves wrong. This is absolutely not a vote of confidence in you. But electorates have minds of their own. So now of all times, we need you to be a credible leader who can change hearts and minds not only by the persuasiveness of good argument but by your personal qualities of integrity and trustworthiness. It's not that the case for remaining in the EU has changed in any way. But public perception may have shifted in the past week: perception of your leadership, perception of your political judgment.

In a few days, the official EU Referendum campaign will be launched. How will you play this moment of opportunity?

If I may say this, I think your best bet is to go on presenting yourself to the public as the leader who is humble enough to recognise his mistakes. It was genuinely moving to hear you say to your audience that you could have handled things better and that you would learn for the future. That was courageous. It's a cliché to quote "a sadder and a wiser man" but perhaps it applies. And I believe this may help you win your case (sorry - I mean our case!). You can show that EU membership is not a matter of your own political survival or historic legacy but comes out of a real personal conviction, a deeply rooted human wisdom, a patriotism that is proud of and desires the very best for our country, and a Christian conscience that seeks the common good of all our partner nations.

One final note. I think that the more you can show that you are really listening to our Brexit friends and taking their concerns seriously, the better it will be. I think that like me, you deplore the bad tempered, sometimes abusive, register some parties in this debate have fallen into. I'm sure you value courtesy, intelligence and good faith in the way political choices are presented and discussed. Good listening isn't just for crises. It's an attribute of every wise leader. You will help set the tone.

Maybe recent events have done you a favour though it may be hard to see it that way just yet. They may have forced you to show a side of yourself to the public that we had not seen before - listening, honest, penitent, wanting to learn and do things differently. And maybe all with a bit more feeling, humaneness if you like. Many of us have warmed to that and - whatever our personal political convictions - genuinely wanted to wish you well. These qualities can help you sound an even more convincing note in the coming weeks before the Referendum. I very much hope so for the sake of the nation and for Europe as a whole.

I hope you won't mind my writing in this personal way. This comes with my prayers.

With best wishes
Michael