Last Saturday, he stood earlier than a throne at Westminster Abbey and gingerly positioned a crown on the head of King Charles III. On Wednesday, he stood up in the gilded chamber of the House of Lords to denounce the authorities’s new migration invoice as “morally unacceptable and politically impractical.”
It has been a momentous week for the archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. Justin Welby — one which captures his distinctive place in British life. Not simply the senior bishop of the Church of England, the man who crowns monarchs, he’s additionally a member of the unelected higher chamber of Britain’s Parliament.
Archbishop Welby gained reward for his sure-footed dealing with of the coronation ceremony. But his fiery intervention in the immigration debate has drawn a tart response from authorities ministers and different Conservative politicians, who say the legislation is required to curb the variety of migrants who illegally cross the English Channel in small boats.
“He’s wrong on both counts,” the immigration minister, Robert Jenrick, advised the BBC. “There’s nothing moral about allowing the pernicious trade of people smugglers to continue,” he stated. “I disagree with him respectfully.”
“By bringing forward this proposal,” Mr. Jenrick continued, “we make it clear that if you come across illegally on a small boat, you will not find a route to life in the U.K. That will have a serious deterrent effect.”
It isn’t uncommon for Archbishop Welby, 67, to weigh in on political or social-justice points. He has spoken out on same-sex marriage, tax coverage, rising power payments and what he referred to as the divisive impact of Brexit. But his speech in the House of Lords carried further weight as a result of the migration legislation is a pillar of the authorities’s legislative agenda, and the legislation, which might take away practically all asylum seekers who arrive in small boats, has gotten a hostile reception in the chamber.
Given the Conservative Party’s majority in the House of Commons — at present 64 seats — the House of Lords is unlikely to torpedo the laws. But it could decelerate the course of by attaching amendments to the invoice and sending it again to the Commons, the place the Conservatives would then should override it.
Archbishop Welby’s phrases gained front-page headlines in British newspapers, making him an influential voice in one among the nation’s most fraught coverage debates. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s authorities has come underneath harsh criticism from human-rights specialists for threatening to place migrants who arrive in Britain illegally on one-way flights to Rwanda, with which Britain has a relocation settlement.
But cracking down on immigration stays well-liked with the pro-Brexit voters who helped give the Conservative Party a landslide victory in the normal election of 2019. Mr. Sunak should name the subsequent election by January 2025. For that purpose, political analysts stated they anticipated Mr. Sunak to maintain pushing the laws, no matter criticism from human rights teams or non secular leaders like the archbishop.
“What’s fascinating is that the Church of England was once nicknamed the Tory Party at prayer,” stated Baroness Rosalind Scott, member of the House of Lords from the Liberal Democratic Party. “But the Tory Party has drifted rightward, while the Church of England has either stayed in place or drifted left a bit. It is very interesting to see that the bishops are falling out with the government on this issue.”
Archbishop Welby argued that the laws was essentially flawed as a result of it didn’t take account of the drivers of mass migration, from battle to local weather change. As an expression of social coverage, he stated, the invoice “fails to live up to our history, our moral responsibility and our political and international interests.”
“We cannot take everyone and nor should we,” he stated. “But this bill has no sense at all of the long-term and of the global nature of the challenge that the world faces. It ignores the reality that migration must be engaged with at source, as well as in the channel, as if we, as a country, were unrelated to the rest of the world.”
For all his criticism, Archbishop Welby referred to as for amending the laws fairly than throwing it out. The Liberal Democratic lords proposed a movement to dismiss the invoice altogether, which garnered little help.
A onetime oil-company worker who solely started coaching as a priest in 1987, Archbishop Welby has lengthy sought to steadiness non secular custom with a altering society. He helps the consecration of ladies as bishops and included them in the coronation ceremony. But different proposals have met with blended success.
In the days main as much as the coronation, he proposed increasing the oath of homage to the new king to embody tens of millions of individuals throughout Britain and its far-flung realms, fairly than simply members of the aristocracy.
But the gesture backfired, with critics on social media saying it was presumptuous and politically tin-eared in a democracy. Archbishop Welby hastened to make clear that the oath was purely voluntary.
The archbishop’s assault on the migration legislation has centered new consideration of the position of the Church of England in the House of Lords. Bishops have had seats in the chamber for hundreds of years, courting to their standing as landowners in the early English Parliament. There at the moment are 26 bishops with seats, 5 of whom, together with Archbishop Welby, get them routinely due to their rank (the relaxation are chosen by seniority).
Critics have argued for casting the bishops out of the House of Lords, saying their presence is outmoded and undemocratic in a rustic that’s more and more secular and the place the Church of England is just one of a number of faiths.
“The oddity is having bishops in the lords at all,” stated Peter Ricketts, a retired British diplomat who’s a cross-bench member of the House of Lords, that means that he doesn’t symbolize a celebration. “I agree there is a good case for ending this practice.”
“But since we have them, it doesn’t shock me that they would speak up, including where draft laws raise moral issues,” Mr. Ricketts continued. “That’s, in a way, the point of having them, after all.”
