Any claim to be Britain’s first Jewish prime minister would rest on a reading of the life of Benjamin Disraeli.
Disraeli, twice prime minister in the 19th century, was born into a British Jewish family in 1804. However, his father, Isaac D’Israeli, had all his children baptised in 1817 to improve their chances of social and professional advancement.
As a result, Disraeli’s religious status is open to debate.
Although he once told the Commons, “I am a Jew,” he was referring only to his heritage, telling an opponent: “I am a Jew, and when the ancestors of the right honourable gentleman were brutal savages in an unknown island, mine were priests in the temple of Solomon.”
Yet he was buried in a churchyard near his estate in Buckinghamshire.
Disraeli once described himself as “the blank page between the Old Testament and the New”.
British Jews have been allowed to sit in Parliament since the passing of the Jews Relief Act in 1858.
The same law — which remains in place — says that no person “professing the Jewish religion, directly or indirectly” may advise the monarch on appointments in the Church of England.