If inviting the Archbishop of Canterbury to guest-edit the New Statesman was some kind of attention-grasping strategy then it succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest expectations. The ensuing row centred mostly on a single sentence from Rowan Williams’s offering – “With remarkable speed, we are being committed to radical, long-term policies for which no one voted.” Given this week’s backtracking on health reforms – which today earned the government a rebuke from the right by former Labour minister Alan Milburn – it might be doubted whether the coalition’s reforms are either speedy or radical. But the wider question was whether he should have said anything at all.
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