The Whingeing Dead Archbishop

[Update at end of post]

Over at the still extant but less well publicised part of Mail Online that hosts the RightMinds bloggers yesterday, one could hear the still and small sound of whimpering, perhaps even of wailing and gnashing of teeth, at a pure and loyal spirit cruelly betrayed on the altar of party uniformity. But, on closer examination, it turned out to be another has-been talking out of his backside.

Adrian Hilton (for it is he) was ostensibly talking up the cause of (yes, it’s her again) Nadine Dorries, recently brought back into the Tory fold for reasons which escape most observers. In reality, Hilton was using the exercise to whine ad infinitum (and most assuredly ad nauseam) about his terribly, terribly unjust treatment at the hands of Michael “something of the night” Howard back in 2005.

It all sounds so plausible: he had been confirmed as the Tory PPC for Slough, his local constituency association supported him, the Spectator article that caused all the fuss had only been stating a constitutional truth, and in any case had been published some two years earlier. Howard, he asserted, had been unnecessarily heavy-handed. He was a truly wronged man.

Sadly, the fact of the matter suggests Hilton is being a little selective with the facts. He had in fact written that “a Catholic EU will inevitably result in the subjugation of Britain's Protestant ethos to Roman Catholic social, political and religious teaching”, following that with the further assertion that the EU meant a “Catholic Caesar presiding over the [British] Protestant monarch”.

Yes, quite apart from the idiotically false assumption that the EU is in some way a religious construct, Hilton was pushing his irrational Europhobia, and he got caught. And this is not the only subject on which Hilton displays an apparent paranoia: he is also virulently homophobic. Yet he is feted by politicians and his fellow pundits, because he is the man behind the Archbishop Cranmer blog.

Apart from Ms Dorries, praise for Cranmer’s witterings has come from Cristina Odone, the loathsome Toby Young, Douglas “Kamikaze” Carswell, Dan Dan the Oratory Man, Lee Rotherham (of the so-called Taxpayers’ Alliance), and ConservativeHome. They are all supporting someone whose latest offerings include yet another screaming denunciation of “homosexualists”.

Why do supposedly mainstream and respectable politicians lend their support to Hilton? Simples. It’s a Christian point of view. It is therefore respectable. It cannot be screaming intolerance because it’s got a cross on it. What these worthies apparently cannot grasp is that the man behind the resurrected Archbishop is nothing more than a dishonest, self-pitying bigot who deserves neither praise, nor attention.

Michael Howard was right to rid the Tories of this singularly unpleasant specimen.

[UPDATE 1515 hours: Adrian Hilton has taken issue with my post, claiming that "the quotes you attribute to me were from i) Shirley Williams and ii) Sunday Telegraph".

The relevant Twitter exchange can be seen above. I therefore dug out the original Spectator article and re-read it, in order to make sure I was giving Hilton a fair hearing. The relevant part of it, the last two paragraphs, can be seen below, with the two quotes I used being the third sentence of the penultimate paragraph, and the first sentence of the final one.

As can be seen, both quotes were taken from his own narrative: none of this was attributed to anyone else. These were his statements, and his alone (I would not dream of accusing him of plagiarism, or otherwise using others' writings as his own).

So Adrian Hilton is not only all the things I previously described, but also a shameless and deliberate liar, an unprincipled charlatan of the lowest kind. Worse, he then attempts to take the Christian and moral high ground by his use of the Archbishop Cranmer persona.

As I said previously, on this occasion Michael Howard was right]