Kemi Badenoch, leader of the U.K.’s beleaguered opposition Conservative Party, no longer has faith in the existence of a higher power, she told the BBC in a recent interview.
Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer is also a nonbeliever, meaning that perhaps for the first time in British political history, both the nation’s premier and the official leader of the opposition have shared such an attitude toward God.
That mirrors the general direction of the wider British public on matters of faith — according to the Pew Research Group, 40% are not religious, up 11 points in a decade, the fastest increase in the rate of nonreligiosity in Europe aside from Estonia. Across Europe, just a quarter of residents are nonbelievers; worldwide the figure is 24.2%, and in the U.S. it’s 29.7%.
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