Every few years, the Guardian decides that the so-called British religious Right is “on the march”, generally with the assistance of a sinister cabal of American evangelical millionaires, those reliable villains.

The supposed return of Christian politics is also regularly noted on the other side of politics, with a more positive spin. Over the weekend the Telegraph reported that “God is back.” Its argument was based on some stirring statements made at a recent carol service for the Reform Christian Fellowship, as well as Reform’s recruitment of Danny Kruger MP and James Orr (a friend of JD Vance), and some polling on conservative-leaning voters’ concerns about the decline of Christianity.

The problem with both these approaches is that they are largely based on vibes rather than facts and data. There is no meaningful Christian vote in Britain, in the sense of a reliable unified bloc which prioritises distinctively Christian concerns. For one thing, only about 10-15% of British adults attend church at least once a month, compared to around 30-40% in the USA. And while religious affiliation is associated with higher propensity to vote, meaning that Christians might have more influence on election day than their share of the general population suggests, practising Christians are politically fragmented, just like the general population. Indeed, the Guardian story from earlier this month reports a survey of 1,500 British evangelicals which found 26% supporting Labour, 20% each for Reform and the Lib Dems, 18% for the Tories and 12% for the Greens. Other Christian groups are similarly diverse in their voting preferences.

There is of course the “quiet revival”, the apparent small uptick in British Christian observance over the last few years, especially among younger cohorts. But even if we accept this as a genuine national trend — and the jury is surely still out — there are many reasons to doubt that it will have any significant political consequences, at least in the short to medium term.

At present, and for the foreseeable future, there is simply no natural constituency for a self-consciously Christian political message. Individual parliamentarians may continue to outline their own commitments, as Kruger did so eloquently this summer, but it’s far from obvious that such messaging can noticeably shift the dial at scale. Recent liberalisations of divorce and abortion law aroused next to no serious public opposition. Any attempt by Reform or the Tories to unpick such changes, however desirable from the perspective of social conservatives, would win few friends and perhaps alienate some existing ones.

Indeed, it was striking that when Kruger was asked for his opinion on porn performer Bonnie Blue endorsing Reform, he avoided any kind of moral comment on her lifestyle, noting instead that his party did not make moral judgements on its voters and would take support wherever possible. I am quite sure that Kruger is privately appalled by Blue’s career. Nevertheless, this pragmatic approach is arguably an implicit admission that, for the modern British politician, there is little mileage in Mary Whitehouse-style jeremiads about sexual immorality and the decline of religion.

Nor can we ignore the way in which rhetorical flourishes from the Right about the need for a return to Christian faith are expressions of anxiety about demographic change. I am open-minded about the Unite The Kingdom movement. Clearly, however, for many of its members, the assertion of Christianity is also an assertion of British and English identity in an age of mass immigration. There is not necessarily anything wrong with this, but it is not quite the same kind of thing as a straightforward Christian revival.

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Niall Gooch is a public sector worker and occasional writer who lives in Kent.

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