Replying to questions on a BBC TV programme today, Lord Carey of Clifton, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, has publicly agreed with the Christian think-tank Ekklesia that it is time for Britain's archaic blasphemy law to be abolished.

The maverick Christian campaigner Stephen Green has won a legal challenge to a magistrate’s decision not to grant a private blasphemy prosecution against Jerry Springer The Opera. But the ultimate casualty of this could be the archaic blasphemy law itself.