THE intervention of Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, into the political and business arena in his role as chairman of the left of centre Institute for Public Policy Research Think Tank reveals more about the state of the Church of England than the state of the country.

His proposition that higher taxes is the remedy to all our problems is, I would argue, naive at the very least and disingenuous at worst. As one critic put it, you can never tax a country to prosperity.

It is interesting to note that Great Britain became the greatest and wealthiest empire in world history when taxes were virtually nil and with a miniscule civil service.

What powered us on was wealth creation primarily due to our manufacturing pre-eminence.

The difference today is that that this country has ceded its wealth creating manufacturing to other nations with its citizens, you and I, preferring instead to export our wealth by buying other nations goods.

In this respect, we are Germany’s biggest export market for motor cars, which I am sure your readers will have noticed.

All our politicians do is argue over an ever-dwindling share of the cake brought about by our buying decisions.

Incredibly, we are even prepared to increase our national debt to give monetary aid to the likes of India and China.

This does not come from taxes, but increased borrowing carried out by the government on behalf of every man, woman and child in this country.

All political parties are guilty of this practice content to leave it to future generations to sort out and nobody knows how it will ever be repaid.

And yet, despite this, we still expect to maintain services such as the NHS, even though as a country we cannot really afford them.

It is a trait of many leaders and Justin Wellsby appears to be no different, to look to causes outside their primary brief to deflect attention away from the problems they should be dealing with in his case the decline in the Church of England as this country’s principal religion.

If he believes so strongly in instituting tax reform instead of promoting the Christian faith perhaps he should consider relinquishing his present role by standing for parliament ­— he has already tried his hand at the world of commerce before becoming Archbishop perhaps its time for another career change?

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