The Church of England: sticking with the Tories through thick and thin

Publication type

Journal Article

Author

Publication date

April 15, 2026

Summary:

Despite the increasing secularization of British society, religion continues to be socially and politically influential. Using the 2009–22 UK Household Longitudinal Study data, this paper examines the effects from religious self-identification on the strength and stability of party support using Anglicans and the Conservative Party as a case study. It demonstrates that affiliating with the Church of England remains a significant predictor of affective attachment to the Conservative Party and of their electoral support. The stability of such support among Anglicans is disproportionately high meaning that this religious identification acts as a buffer against increasing partisan volatility among the Tory supporters indicating the relevance of religion for British electoral politics.

Published in

Parliamentary Affairs

Volume and page numbers

Volume: 79 , p.263 -305

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1093/pa/gsaf028

ISSN

312290

Subjects

Notes

© The Author(s) 2025. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Hansard Society.

Open Access

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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