UK remains anti-Catholic

Sir, - Some are apparently shocked that the Conservatives should seek a deal with a party as openly anti-Catholic as the Democratic Unionist Party. But there should be no surprise. The UK was and remains, quite simply, a sectarian state.

The established church and official religion of the state is Protestant, with permanent, unelected representation in Parliament.

Our hereditary head of state is barred from being Catholic. The monarch could not even marry a Catholic until 2011.

The UK has never had a Catholic Prime Minister. Tony Blair only converted to Catholicism after leaving Downing Street, viewing the faith as so politically explosive that he remained a closet

Catholic until 2007. The ridicule and contempt which greeted his conversion only proved his suspicions to be, sadly, correct.

The stooshie which ensued in March this year after SNP MP Carol Monaghan attended House of Commons business with ashes on her forehead, a Catholic ritual on Ash Wednesday, suggests we have not progressed very far in the intervening decade. A Tory-DUP deal would prove it. David Kelly. 17 Highfields, Dunblane.