Thanks to Partygate, theology has unexpectedly intruded into politics

An archbishop opined on politics and MPs offered Christian teaching to each other, writes John Rentoul

It was as if we had been transported back to the 18th or 19th centuries, when MPs debated matters of state in religious language (Getty)

I was brought up short, in the Commons debate on referring the prime minister to the Committee of Privileges to determine if he had knowingly misled parliament, when Steve Baker, the Conservative MP for High Wycombe, referred to Ian Blackford, the Westminster leader of the Scottish National Party, as “a brother in Christ”.

Blackford, who is a member of the Free Church of Scotland, looked a little taken aback. Baker asked him if he didn’t believe in redemption, to which Blackford replied blandly: “I believe in truth and justice, and I believe that a prime minister who has misled the house should face appropriate sanctions.”

The question was a strange one, not just because it was phrased in explicitly religious terms, but because when Baker came to give his own view it turned out that, although he did believe in redemption, he didn’t think that Boris Johnson’s contrition was genuine: “The prime minister’s apology lasted only as long as it took to get out of the headmaster’s study.” So he too thought the prime minister should go.