SIR – The Conservative leadership contest is in danger of descending into some delinquent family row: doors slammed, crockery smashed and names called.
If it carries on in this way until September, what sort of party will the next leader inherit – and how will he or she be able to form a Cabinet of all the talents?
Sir Tony Baldry Bloxham, Oxfordshire
SIR – A popular horse racing adage is that, if a trainer does not know which of his string will be his Derby horse, it probably means he doesn’t have one.
As no Derby horse has emerged in the Conservative Party, this probably means that it doesn’t have one.
SIR – Would it be too much to ask each candidate to state their first principles?
SIR – Despite his claim that he would “run the economy like Thatcher” (Interview, July 13), Rishi Sunak did not do so when he was Chancellor. Why should we believe him now?
It appears he is prepared to promise anything to get the top job. However, I for one have had enough of ambitious politicians who lack conviction.
SIR – In our present economic situation, I am inclined to support any candidate who does not offer tax cuts.
Charles Dobson Burton in Kendal, Cumbria
SIR – We must not forget the candidates’ responses to the pandemic. Rishi Sunak was part of a government that brought in repeated lockdowns, with unthinkable economic and health harms.
If faced with a similar event, would any of these individuals bring in vaccine passports or close schools? The candidates should make their positions clear; we have learnt that a Tory government cannot always be trusted to safeguard our liberties.
Dr Katie Musgrave Loddiswell, Devon
SIR – The first duty of government is defence of the realm. Candidates?
SIR – Defence spending, rethinking net zero, tackling wokery – worthy platforms all.
Me, I’d vote for whoever promises to get GPs back to work. After all, there’s no point being well-armed, warm and open-minded if you’ve died waiting for a doctor’s appointment.
SIR – Tom Tugendhat has been an MP for several years and has served Britain in the Army, so is used to thinking under pressure, making firm decisions and seeing them through. He strikes me as a responsible person who has the good of this country at heart.
Above all, he has kept his own counsel and not bayed for Boris Johnson’s blood, then immediately applied for his position.
Lee Herapath Bates Broadstairs, Kent
SIR – I understand who the runners are – but who, exactly, are the “riders”?
J J Hawkins Torrington, Devon
SIR – Tanya Gold (Comment, July 13) writes that “if you have the income to pay for a private education, you are not the squeezed middle, you are rich”.
This is simply not true. Many parents make sacrifices to pay for private education. Very often they don’t “have the income” to do so, but are instead saving up well ahead of time or tapping grandparents for help to meet the fees.
No doubt the high parental and grandparental support and motivation that this involves is one driver of the sector’s academic achievements, by which Ms Gold seems rather perplexed.
Moreover, those who choose to invest so heavily in their family’s future at the expense of immediate pleasures demonstrate just the kind of deferred gratification that has long been recognised as a predictor of academic attainment in households.
Gavin King Long Ashton, Somerset
SIR – Tanya Gold rails against charitable tax relief for private schools suggesting that the money saved should be put into the national education pot.
What she takes no account of is that barring access to private education will add to the number of pupils going into state education. Thus a new, “bigger” pot will be needed to cover the education of more pupils.
Has anybody actually quantified what would be lost and what gained by driving private education to the wall? I fear that the money saved in tax relief would then be spread so thinly throughout the wider state-education system that it would make no difference at all.
SIR – Zac Goldsmith and Chris Skidmore (Comment, July 11) support the phasing out of fossil fuels.
Commodities such as oil and coking coal are basic industrial feedstocks. Green technology such as railways and wind turbines require steel for their manufacture, and to make steel you need such industrial feedstocks.
Oil and coking coal will also provide more blue-collar jobs in Scotland and the North, which will be good for the governing party come the next general election.
Finally, more jobs in the North will relieve housing pressure in the southern “blue wall”, thus protecting the surrounding countryside.
John Barstow Pulborough, West Sussex
SIR – John Chillington’s letter (July 12) is on the money. Travelling on the East Coast Main Line north of Peterborough yesterday, I saw that harvesting was well under way on the prime, pristine farmland between Uffington and Essendine.
However, this agricultural land, nearly 2,200 acres of it, is under second-phase consultation for the proposed 350MW Mallard Pass solar industrial site.
Surely Rolls-Royce’s small modular nuclear reactors are the way forward for meeting the strategic needs of both energy and food security, given their productive output from a very small footprint, certainly compared with solar.
A C H Irvine Grantham, Lincolnshire
SIR – With Vladimir Putin threatening to cut off supplies of gas from Russia to the EU, why has Britain not started fracking?
Surely we should be pumping the stuff into the EU as a matter of national emergency. Such a move would also have the advantage of improving both our national image and our finances.
Jim Wood Doncaster, South Yorkshire
SIR – I would like to clarify my position on end-of-life care (Letters, July 12).
Over the past two years I have helped to raise thousands of pounds for cancer charities, including the local hospice and Marie Curie nurses. This has been done on behalf of a loved one as a token of my gratitude for the help and support provided towards the end of her illness. My desire is for legally assisted dying to be part of the care offered to the terminally ill, not to replace hospices.
As Dr John Noone states in his explanation of the use of syringe drivers (Letters, July 13), more difficult cases have the option of admission to a hospice in order to receive specialist care. That is all I wish to see: another option for those facing pointless suffering. In a situation whereby even a subcutaneous morphine injection cannot of itself control a patient’s pain, even if only in a minority of cases, surely the terminally ill deserve all the options they can legally get.
SIR – Tory leadership candidate Penny Mordaunt (Notebook, July 12) apparently describes Dad’s Army writers David Croft and Jimmy Perry as having “churned out” the scripts for their successful situation comedies.
Croft acknowledged that he and Perry commonly wrote a complete half-hour script over a long weekend, but added: “Yes, it takes three days – and 30 years.”
Colin Bostock-Smith Uckfield, East Sussex
SIR – Perceptions of what constitutes hot weather have changed over time (Letters, July 13).
Forty years ago, Alistair Cooke recalled arriving in London from a sweltering New York August and the headline of the capital’s evening paper reading: “75 again today! No relief in sight.”
Dominic Weston Smith Faringdon, Oxfordshire
SIR – I was a student nurse at Liverpool Royal Infirmary in the hot summer of 1976.
We wore heavy cotton dresses with starched aprons over them and a starched white collar and stud. The concession to the heatwave was that we might temporarily open our collar studs and remove the belt we wore over our aprons.
Woe betide anyone who complained.
SIR – On the hottest day of the 1976 heatwave, I was an articled clerk at a firm of solicitors in Liverpool. News that one of the partners had taken his jacket off spread around the office like wildfire.
SIR – Why is the BBC always trying to discredit the Army (“SAS ‘death squad’ claims to be investigated”, report, July 13)?
SIR – The BBC claims that it is making every effort to reduce its costs.
However, it continues to misuse taxpayers’ licence fees by making unwanted programmes on the SAS, which denigrate the Armed Forces and encourage spurious claims against one of our most respected regiments.
One would have hoped that events leading up to the prosecution of Phil Shiner, the disgraced human rights lawyer, would have shown the unreliability of local witnesses.
Regrettably, our national broadcaster continues to favour a Left-wing agenda with little regard for the wishes of the public.
SIR – Gary Lineker is paid up to £1.35 million for a part-time contract with the BBC, mostly for asking: “What do you think, Alan?” (report, July 13). Alan Shearer himself receives at least £450,000.
Both presenters are very good, but at a time when the BBC claims it is hard-pressed and refuses to grant free passes to the over-75s, their pay is a disgrace. If they are self-employed, it is easy to cancel such deals.
Various culture secretaries have failed to reduce spending at the corporation, while the BBC – paid for by us – trashes the Tories relentlessly.
David Ratliff Newcastle upon Tyne
SIR – It can’t be that hard to find a less expensive replacement for Gary Lineker.
But, of course, it’s not the BBC’s money being spent – it’s ours.
Stephen Howey Woodford Green, Essex
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