This month's magazine cover issue is the prospect of Britain’s first avowedly atheist prime minister after the UK general election on 4 July. Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, would not be the first unbeliever as head of government; rather, as Paul Goodman points out, he would be the first to admit as much openly. We already have the first non-Christian Prime Minister with Rishi Sunak, who is a practising Hindu. Yet it is still a jolt to realise that unbelief is so prevalent in politics as to be unremarkable to the electorate. Britain has changed, obviously. In 2021 the census findings revealed that less than half the population, 46 per cent, identified as Christian, and this was far more the case among the young. The situation is not primarily attributable to immigration from non-Christian countries, though this is a factor; it is the falling away of a generation that a couple of decades ago would mostly have thought of itself as Christian. Sir Keir, then, is representative of contemporary Britain in his absence of faith and his willingness to admit it.