BREXIT debates have pulled the country apart, Swindon’s new bishop has said in her Christmas address.

Vivienne Faull, who was consecrated Bishop of Bristol in July, said the country now needed a new vision of hope and “the hard graft of reconciliation”.

In her first Christmas address to the Bristol diocese, of which Swindon is a part, she said: “Our country has been pulled apart by the debate about Brexit.

“The campaigns and votes have laid bare the rifts not just within political parties but between London and the wider nation, between the nations which form our United Kingdom, between those who are growing richer and those who day by day are getting poorer.

“My first post in the Church of England was in Liverpool, a city being torn apart by the impact of the troubles in Northern Ireland.

“There was deep division, with the ongoing threat of violence. But painfully slowly the hard work of mending the tears in that city was beginning as Christians dared to meet across the boundaries of denomination and befriend those who had deeply different beliefs.

“Painstaking work brought Christians of different churches together to serve the city, making common cause to work for hope, and peace, and prosperity.”

Wishing her congregations a happy Christmas, she added: “Our whole country now needs a new vision of hope, it needs determined work alongside those who are poor, it needs the hard graft of reconciliation.

“It will take courage to reach out to each other with the offer of peace and hope. The courage of Mary when God reached out to her. The courage of Joseph as he reached out to Mary. The courage of shepherds and magi who left the familiar and journeyed to see Jesus, the one who brings peace to the world.”