Archbishop John Sentamu on why politicians are like men arguing at a urinal

‘I shoot further than you, I am the biggest of the men!’ says John Sentamu, Archbishop of York. He is talking about the way politicians conduct themselves in the immigration debate. ‘We have got to be more grown up about it and not be like people who are screaming at each other across banks of a river,’ he says. ‘They mustn’t do what some people call male diplomacy which is always around the urinal… that kind of argument, it doesn’t work!’

Sentamu prefers a still small voice of calm from politicians, even if his own voice is booming and indomitable. His is never more than a few words away from a chuckle or a joke. This week sees the publication of a collection of essays called On Rock or Sand? Firm Foundations for Britain’s Future — a 21st-century follow-up to the Church of England’s ‘Faith and the City’ report that so irritated Margaret Thatcher in 1985. Sentamu has written a chapter, as has the Arch-bishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby. Dedicated to ‘hard-pressed families on poverty wages’, the book contains some lines that could rile politicians as much as ‘Faith and the City’ did in the 1980s. Welby writes of cities in ‘what appear to be lose-lose situations’ and that ‘as the south-east grows, many cities are left feeling abandoned and hopeless’ and are in a ‘vicious circle of decline’.

Sentamu says he wanted to edit this book after being struck by ‘absolute poverty’ in his diocese. He is strident about the problems of the welfare system, arguing that the current set-up places too little emphasis on contribution: ‘It was supposed to be a safety net so that no citizen in this country really could be driven into poverty because they haven’t got a job or they’ve come across some circumstances that are really very difficult to survive as people.