Williams: Coalition

Williams: Coalition’s mandate is questionable

Williams: Coalition’s mandate is questionable

Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams, writing for the New Statesman, questions the coalition government's mandate to reform:

"With remarkable speed, we are being committed to radical, long-term policies for which no one voted.

"At the very least, there is an understandable anxiety about what democracy means in such a context.

"Government badly needs to hear just how much plain fear there is around such questions at present.

"The uncomfortable truth is that, while grass-roots initiatives and local mutualism are to be found flourishing in a great many places, they have been weakened by several decades of cultural fragmentation."