Oh my. The BBC reports that all is not well at Pope HQ. Senior adviser and old git Cardinal Walter Kasper, when recently interviewed, referred to the UK as a “Third World country” marked by “a new and aggressive atheism”. Hole dug, the Vatican then said that the cardinal had not intended “any kind of slight” (oh, so that’s OK then), and was referring to the UK’s multicultural society (oh, so that’s—what? Wait a minute!). Kasper’s comment had in fact been “when you land at Heathrow you think at times you have landed in a Third World country”. Nice.

The UK’s got all sorts of problems when it comes to tribalism, but, by and large, it doesn’t do too bad. This island’s been a melting-pot nation of immigrants for centuries, and that’s part of what has made it great. To criticise the UK on the basis of its multiculturalism shows up Kasper and co. as being an even bigger shower of arseholes than most Brits thought in the first place.