What’s the worst that can happen if political parties tell blatant untruths to people, debase campaigning standards and conduct knowing assaults on trust? If only there were places in the world to which we could point in order to answer that question

Marina Hyde, columnist, on Conservative London mayoral campaigning, The Guardian, 26 March

Journalists around the world should be protected, free to hold people and power to account without fear of reprisal. We pray for those hundreds of journalists currently in prison for carrying out this vital work

Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, X/Twitter, 27 March

Let’s acknowledge and confront the strongest argument against assisted dying. As (objectors say) the practice spreads, social and cultural pressure will grow on the terminally ill to hasten their own deaths so as “not to be a burden” on others or themselves. I believe this will indeed come to pass. And I would welcome it

Matthew Parris, The Times, 30 March

At a time when so little cash goes into palliative care, social care has collapsed, we have a well-documented mental-health crisis among the young and the elderly are being routinely told (by people like Matthew Parris) that they are blocking their children’s future — is this really the moment to open the door to legalised suicide? It would be like handing a loaded gun to a bankrupt man and telling him he’s under no pressure to use it

Tim Stanley, The Daily Telegraph, 1 April

I do think that we are culturally a Christian country. I call myself a “cultural Christian”. I’m not a believer; but there’s a distinction between being a “believing Christian” and a “cultural Christian”. I love hymns and Christmas carols. I sort of feel at home in the Christian ethos, I feel that we are a Christian country in that sense. . . I would not be happy if, for example, we lost all our cathedrals and our beautiful parish churches

Richard Dawkins, scientist and atheist polemicist, LBC, 1 April

That the fruits of Christianity can be saved while its roots are severed speaks to a naivety that is perhaps typical of Dawkins’s generation. Baby boomers wanted to tear down the conventions of traditional society and yet, at the same time, overwhelmingly benefitted from them

Esmé Partridge, UnHerd, 2 April

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