Amanda Platell, Phoney Christian

After the Archbishop of Canterbury expressed his “deep regret and sorrow” 70 years after the bombing of Dresden, this did not take long to be deliberately mistranslated as an “apology” by the right-leaning part of the press. When the Church of England then passed adverse comment on some aspects of life in the UK today, that brought the immediate - and wrong - assumption that it was an attack on the Tories.

The stuff of nightmares

In the Northcliffe House bunker, the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre appears to have been apoplectic: Wednesday’s Daily Mail Comment, the authentic voice of the Vagina Monologue, thundered “Instead of commenting on Britain’s disgraceful treatment of its old people, they offer half-baked thoughts on economics, attacking the Government’s austerity programme for spreading ‘insecurity and anxiety’, while (yawn!) blaming Margaret Thatcher’s market revolution for ‘fragmenting social solidarity at many levels’”.

So it was no surprise that the Mail’s Glenda Emeritus, Amanda Bloody Platell, should take the idea that the C of E was full of rotten lefties as the lead topic for her characteristically catty Saturday sermon, telling “it was with surprise and dismay that … I read the 52-page letter from our Church's bishops, advising us electorate to vote Labour. For though it claimed to be impartial, the letter was little more than a Left-wing manifesto”.

Terrible, eh? Do go on (as if she needs any encouragement). “And where does the responsibility lie for such blatant politicking? I fear with the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby … As for his bishops' letter, where was any mention of the issues that are truly undermining Christian values in Britain today: abandonment of the elderly, the scourge of internet porn and drugs, the undermining of the traditional family?”

Let’s take just one of those topics: Amanda Platell has no room to talk about internet porn, having conned the Daily Mail’s readership something rotten in an apparent exposé of such things back in May 2013, only for it to be revealed that the young woman being allegedly abused was not underage, as she suggested, but over 18.

And if we’re going to talk about the Church being concerned for the less well off, which was the general thrust of what the C of E was talking about last week, perhaps Ms Platell, who claims to have been a regular churchgoer for over 50 years, would care to inspect Luke Chapter 4, verses 18 and 19.

“The spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me; he has sent me to announce good news to the poor, to proclaim release for prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind; to let the broken victims go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour”.

Perhaps she might also consider Luke Chapter 5, verses 20 and 21.

“Blessed are you who are in need; the kingdom of God is yours. Blessed are you who now go hungry; you will be satisfied”.

Yet Amanda Platell has attended Church for more than half a century and somehow missed the point. Not only is this another grossly un-Christian and appallingly catty column, it exposes her as a phoney. So ideal Daily Mail pundit material, then.