A collection of 55 writers, broadcasters, scientists and academics have penned a furious letter to the Daily Telegraph accusing the Prime Minister of fostering ‘alienation and division in our society’ by asserting in his article that we live in a ‘Christian country’.

They claim that ‘repeated surveys, polls and studies show that most of us as individuals are not Christian in our beliefs or our religious identities’, and suggest that Mr Cameron is in danger of fuelling ‘enervating sectarian debates’.

Wow! You would have thought he had called for compulsory church attendance, whereas he wrote a harmless piece that will surely have offended no one except for a few metropolitan liberal atheists who reveal themselves as being astonishingly intolerant and — to borrow their word — divisive.

Mr Cameron’s declaration that we live in a ‘Christian country’ is irrefutable. Our constitutional arrangements are bound up with the Anglican Church — a fact dismissed by the angry letter-writers as being of little importance.