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But couldn’t it? OK, our politicians are unlikely to tell us that they take their instructions directly from Jesus. But even in a country with steadily falling numbers of regular churchgoers, the leaders of the major parties must be seen to trot off to church. And there has been, throughout the last decade in Britain, a growing emphasis on presenting politicians not just as the deliverers of particular policies for whom we should vote if we agree with those policies, but as moral individuals for whom we should vote if we sympathise with their personal creed.Tony Blair has rushed fervently towards this new framing of the political debate. Before becoming Prime Minister, he spoke of his Christianity as the reason why he rejected both Conservatism and Marxism. Since being Prime Minister, he has called for a new moral purpose in Britain, and he has emphasised and paraded his own churchgoing and conventional family life. He is then puzzled when people don’t buy the moral mood-music, when they seem to want policies as well.

“It is bizarre that any government that I lead should be seen as anti-family,” he wrote in bemusement in one of his leaked memos.Maybe the politicians think that we’ll applaud their frankness if they share their religious convictions with us. After all, if we are going to vote for them, it might be just as well to find out where their moral temperament comes from. But the odd thing about all this religious chat is that it doesn’t tell us anything about what matters with a politician – that is, what they will do with power. Indeed, what we tend to find is that the greater the piety, the muddier the ethics in practice.After all, if we look back to the US, any politician who bashes the Bible with the regularity of Bush, Gore or Lieberman might be expected to give the electorate some hard moral choices.

Instead, the debate over real ethical issues has hit an all-time low. In a country where one man, Bill Gates, owns the same wealth as 40 per cent of the nation, Bush is talking of trillions of dollars of tax-cuts to help the wealthy get wealthier. In a country where more than a third of people have no health insurance, Gore is talking not about healthcare for all but about tinkering with prescription charges.Help for the developing world? Surely a priority for these Christ-like figures, but we hear not a peep about it. The ever-rising numbers of people spending their lives in prison? Five per cent of all adult males, a disproportionate number of whom are poor and black, get locked up in the US, and hundreds await execution. It’s a revolting spectacle, watching politicians get self-congratulatory about their personal holiness, while closing their eyes to the immorality of their policies.Let’s hope religiosity is one arena in which British politicians will hold back from following their US counterparts. Certainly, politicians should be careful – the UK electorate has little tolerance for biblical injunctions.

In a country where fewer than half of the people say they follow a religion, politicians might find that too many statements of faith or pictures of themselves going to church will alienate rather than charm the electorate.Even in America, a far more religious country, the rise of religious rhetoric has been matched by a mass turn-off by the electorate. The number of young people who watch any of the political conventions on TV has fallen by a fifth over the last 15 years, while voter turn-out had fallen to under half the electorate in the last election. What voters on both sides of the Atlantic still seem to want is policies, not piety. But whether they’ll get what they want, God only knows.n.walter btinternet . Today – a topical story about education, called “The Day the A Level Results Came Through”. Today – a topical story about education, called “The Day the A Level Results Came Through”. The day that Sidney Delamere’s A level results came through, he almost didn’t open them.

He was late for work and had decided to leave his post till the evening. But his wife reminded him of the last time he had done that, and how he had nearly missed a very important invitation, and so he reluctantly decided to stay an extra five minutes and open the morning mail.One of the packages contained his A level results.”Good God,” he said.”What is it, dear?” said his wife.”It seems to be my A level results,” he said.”I didn’t know you had been doing any A levels,” she said.”I haven’t,” said Sidney “Not recently Not since I left school. These are the results of my A levels at school.”Sidney Delamere was in his mid-fifties He was the accounts manager of a large firm of undertakers He wasn’t interested in A levels. He was interested in money and pension rights and tax schemes, which is not the sort of thing they award A levels for, even in these enlightened days.”Well, surely you got the results of your A levels when you were at school,” said his wife.