The Church of England's argument about the consecration of women bishops reminds me of nothing so much as the Labour Party's debate over Clause Four. That, too, was marked by obscure references to past conferences; to articles and sub-clauses of previous resolutions.

This is no coincidence - there always was a religious tint to the Labour Party. As the historian Ben Pimlott wrote of Labour's creation: “The Socialist Commonwealth was more than merely analogous to the Second Coming: in the imagination of speakers and audiences there was a blurring and a merging of the two.”

That blurring thrives today. In many families and areas of the country, “being Labour” is not a political position, but a faith. They might not actually be called Articles of Religion, but that is what the articles of Labour's constitution were.

It became immediately obvious when somebody (Tony Blair) challenged it, that Clause Four of the constitution was an anachronism. So too was it apparent, as the bishops cited obscure religious clauses this week, that refusing female access to the higher reaches of a Church that claims to represent England in the 21st century, is an outdated, discriminatory (and illegal, I would have thought) practice. No matter what the doctrine says.

Just because it was obvious doesn't mean that it was easy to change. So the Church and the Archbishop of Canterbury deserve a resounding cheer this morning, for facing down resignation threats from the traditionalists, and for refusing to sit on the fence and compromise over women bishops. The proposal for “super-bishops” to cater for traditionalist parishes who object to a woman was rightly rejected as still discriminatory.

I suspect that, as Rabbi Jonathan Romain wrote of his own experiences in a letter to The Times yesterday, we shall look back in a few years' time and wonder what all the fuss was about; just as most people reading Labour's old Clause IV (4) today would laugh that it retained such a place at the heart of a party aspiring to power - it was printed on every Labour membership card - in Britain in the late 1990s.

David Cameron has yet to experience a Clause Four moment. In part, this is his party's fault, not his: Tory members lack the religiosity of Labour's and it is harder for their leader to find sacred cows to slay. For all their opinionated harshness, Conservatives will bend easily to win power (except on Europe, where he has not challenged them).

Yet Mr Cameron feels that he has decontaminated sufficiently the Conservative brand by talking about compassion and green issues for a while that it is now safe for him to show his hard Tory core. So this week he excoriated the poor, the fat, the drug-addicted, the poorly educated, the drunk and the indebted as feckless, irresponsible, “twisted” - as no less than immoral. He nastily elided those whom it is easy to condemn - the drunk or addicted, the healthy but workshy - with the poor: “We talk about people being ‘at risk of obesity' instead of talking about people who eat too much and take too little exercise. We talk about people being at risk of poverty, or social exclusion: it's as if these things - obesity, alcohol abuse, drug addiction - are purely external events like a plague or bad weather.”

Compassionate? That? How dare this man with every chance in life from the start, tell an overweight and pregnant teenager with little literacy, whose own mother is an illiterate drunk who never gave a damn about her education or her physical welfare, and whose only chance in life are the teachers, social workers and benefits staff trying to help her - how dare this man tell that woman she doesn't deserve that help?

Do not tell me that is not what Mr Cameron meant. His language could not have been starker. Indeed he acknowledged himself that it is impossible to find the words to say it sensitively. Enough of understanding, time now to judge.

Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me

- and I will tell them it is all their fault.

Beware the politician who reaches for religious phraseology. It is “our mission”, Mr Cameron said, “to heal the wounds”.

“We can and will bring hope and aspiration to places where there is resignation and despair.” Where there is darkness, let there be light. “I want the strength of our commitment to inspire faith.”

It sounded like Mr Blair but it was far more condemnatory than he would ever have been. Hell, it was more condemnatory than Michael Portillo or Peter Lilley in their most ill-judged moments.

The speech was embraced by the Tory evangelical Tim Montgomerie, editor of the ConservativeHome.com blog, who linked it with a church view of poverty - something that can be defeated by morality, and has been worsened by the “liberal Left's social experiments”. Christian conservatism comes to the UK.

And like the Conservatism that the country so roundly rejected in 1997, it doesn't include, it excludes. The exclusion zone of Mr Cameron's uncompassionate Conservatism is wide. It encompasses not only the lazy and the drunk, but a vast array of other miscreants - the fat, the poor, the poorly educated, people with broken marriages behind them, the products of those relationships.

In my life I have been neither a Tory nor a regular churchgoer. I have no more desire to be a Conservative minister than to be a minister of God. Funny, though, that just as the Church of England drags itself into the 21st century and offers to include me fully, a Conservative Party that wants to represent Britain in the 21st century firmly slams the door. Because you're not perfect enough. You're not in our gang.

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