The foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, has been denouncing the persecution of Christians around the world in advance of a report he has commissioned from the Bishop of Truro. It’s true, and important, that Christians are being persecuted in large numbers, especially in the Middle East, and that this has been largely ignored by the British media for decades. But there is something very jarring in Hunt’s discovery of their cause.

In remarks to the press in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, one of the oldest Christian countries in the world, he blamed “political correctness” as well as post-colonial guilt for the British indifference to the suffering of Christians in Asia and Africa. There is certainly some truth to these accusations. The view that all religious believers were weird at best, and that anyone enlightened must be an atheist, were quite fashionable in the early years of this century. It was usually expressed as hostility to Muslims as much as in indifference to the sufferings of Christians – but it certainly wasn’t sympathy.

But Hunt is himself reportedly a Christian and he should remember the parable of the mote and the beam. The government of which he is a part has done almost nothing to support Christians abroad. It did not offer asylum to Asia Bibi, the Pakistani woman convicted under that country’s monstrous blasphemy law. It has sucked up to Saudi Arabia, a country where public Christianity is illegal, Christian migrant workers are treated abominably and where the corpses of executed criminals are still crucified.

It is a supporter of the government in Egypt, a country where Coptic churches are frequently assaulted. It is eager to trade with China, a country where Christians are persecuted and churches demolished. I can find no record of Hunt or any other recent foreign secretary raising these concerns directly when visiting the countries concerned.

‘The Tories did not offer asylum to Asia Bibi, the Pakistani woman convicted under that country’s monstrous blasphemy law.’ A crowd carries placards against Asia Bibi in Karachi, November 2018. Photograph: Asif Hassan/AFP/Getty Images

Then there is the catastrophe that has befallen Iraqi Christians. Along with other religious minorities (let us not forget the Yazidis), those who lived around Mosul have been the victims of something that looks like attempted genocide at the hands of Islamic State. The survivors fled into Kurdish-controlled territories, but even there they could not feel entirely safe. There are community memories of the part played by Sunni Kurds in an earlier genocide, when the Armenian population of Turkey was largely exterminated in 1915.

The British government, an enthusiastic participant in the invasion of Iraq, obviously bears some responsibility for the brutal anarchy that followed. It did very little to relieve the suffering of the Assyrian Christians there. Even a proposal raised by some British evangelicals to ship to Kurdistan some of the winter equipment abandoned by British forces in their retreat from Afghanistan was vetoed by the government. As for taking in refugees – we all know what the Conservative policy has been on asylum seekers.

It’s very hard not to conclude that Hunt is using the genuine suffering of millions of Christians around the world more as a political gesture at home than as anything that might actually help them. Christianity is increasingly being used as a label distinct from and opposed to Islam – and as a flag in the culture wars.

In England today, Christianity is associated with extremes of both nationalism and with internationalism: bishops and archbishops preach and pray about foreign aid and the persecuted church, but self-identified Anglicans have much more rightwing views.

In the context of British politics, calls for Christian solidarity worldwide appeal most to those voters who want least done to help the real, suffering Christians. Political correctness really isn’t the important problem here.

• Andrew Brown is a Guardian writer and an author