Labour MPs back disestablishment

Never able to leave well enough alone, Labour MPs are seizing on the Archbishop of Canterbury's technically true but unwise observation that disestablishment of the Church of England "would not be the end of the world" to advocate bringing it on, since, after all, it would not, in the strict sense, end the world. Predictably, the [disgraceful and tragic] expulsion of the hereditary peers from the House of Lords in 1999 is used as precedent. And unfortunately, they have a point: if it's "wrong" for peers to hold seats in Parliament based on heredity, if the liberal principle of "non-discrimination" is to govern everything, surely it's also "wrong" for clergy of a particular religion that now represents only a minority of British people to hold on to theirs. What's left unsaid is the question of what all this ultimately means for the monarchy itself, beyond the Roman Catholic succession issue. I shudder to think of how disestablishment might affect the next Coronation...