There are, roughly, three kinds of Catholic politician in Britain. There is the kind who governs by catechism and seldom makes it off the back benches. There is the kind who is orthodox on some teachings and deeply disappointing on the rest. And there is the third kind: the kind who keeps the label and discards the contents, like a man who keeps an empty wine bottle on the shelf, in the hope it might impress someone someday.
Andy Burnham is the third kind. He does not hide his connection to the Church. Altar boy at St Aelred's, raised by an Irish mother who kept the Sundays well enough to produce competition over who got to hold the Communion plate. He even went to Rome in 2023 and gave Pope Francis a Manchester United shirt, which the Holy Father presumably received with the same warmth one reserves for a gift one did not ask for and cannot use. Good stories perhaps but far from evidence of belief.
