Delingpole: The Archbishop of Canterbury Has a Bad Case of Brexit Derangement Syndrome

The Archbishop of Canterbury has been driven mad by Brexit Derangement Syndrome.

He has gone full AC Grayling. (And no one, not even one so eminent as an Eton-educated senior cleric in the Church of England, should ever go full AC Grayling).

Really, though. What can possibly have possessed him to make the risible claim that the European Union is “the greatest dream realised for human beings since the fall of the Western Roman Empire”?

The Western Roman Empire fell in 476 – that was when the last Roman emperor surrendered to the barbarians.

Is Welby seriously trying to tell us that the best thing that has happened to human beings since that date is the creation of a corrupt, democratically unaccountable, socialistic superstate run by dictatorial technocrats who despise liberty, free markets, and national sovereignty?

Perhaps he is. It would certainly not be an unusual position for a churchman to adopt. But generally, that would have been in the Middle Ages. Or perhaps during the Renaissance around the time when one of the Borgias was Pope. These days, churchmen – especially in the Anglican church – tend to be of a fluffier disposition.

What they also try to do as a rule is not to say anything which is not going to upset or alienate too many of their flock – which, technically, in Welby’s case, is everyone who lives in England whether they’re a churchgoer or not.

Well all I can say, as someone who definitely qualifies, is that right now I am one very unhappy sheep.

Here, just by way of random examples, are a few other dreams that have been “realised for human beings” since 1476.

Slavery has been abolished.

Sundry terrible diseases – smallpox, measles, polio, bubonic plague etc – have been eradicated or all-but-eradicated.

Women and poor people now generally get the vote.

Everyone, except in a handful of tyrannies, gets equality before the law.

Torture is mostly frowned upon.

Death by violence is at an all-time historical low.

Life-expectancy is at an all-time historical high.

We don’t yet all have jetpacks but we do have: iPhones, virtually free music on demands, free phone calls, affordable travel to the world’s furthest flung places, free (-ish) universal healthcare, TVs, cheap and abundant food, access to clean drinking water, cheap and varied fashions, Tinder, Grindr…

I wouldn’t necessarily expect the Archbishop of Canterbury to approve of all of these things. But the idea that not one single one of them can match the glories of the European Union is just too absurd for words.

Perhaps he’s just very, very thick but I doubt it – he did read Law and History at Trinity, Cambridge, followed by 11 years working in the oil industry.

So I can only assume that it is Brexit that has driven him over the edge.

Sad.