Justin Welby’s BBC interview was a very bad idea. What was he thinking?

Perhaps the former Archbishop of Canterbury intended to convey remorse and accountability in his conversation with Laura Kuenssberg. But that’s not how it’s been received, observes George Pitcher

Back in June 2011, I negotiated a guest editorship of the New Statesman for Dr Rowan Williams, then Archbishop of Canterbury. We commissioned coalition ministers such as Iain Duncan Smith and William Hague and a piece from Gordon Brown on youth unemployment.

Then Dr Williams wrote his leader. It was a reasoned and reasonable piece on the shifting tectonic plates of British politics, which in passing noted that “Government badly needs to hear just how much plain fear there is” around issues such as child poverty, access to education and sustainable infrastructure in poorer communities.

It was the line I lifted for the headline: “The government needs to know how afraid people are”. And I showed the page proof to a colleague who looked after the archbishop’s parliamentary affairs, a man whose judgment I much admire. I asked simply what would happen when we published.

He said the proverbial…