Angela Rayner has proven she is not a woman to be messed with

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With the Tories’ intrusive forays into her private tax concerns, Angela Rayner has been the victim of class prejudice (Danny Lawson/PA)

Angela Rayner ought to be praised for her consummate dignity throughout the Tory party’s attempts to bring her down with intrusive forays into her private tax concerns; a wholly unedifying experience. She has now been vindicated by all concerned.

The police are satisfied, likewise HMRC. Good on her for not kowtowing to the Conservative Party’s insatiable demands to bare all her financial affairs. A less determined person might have buckled.

I have always held Rayner in high regard. Likewise, a lesser leader than Keir Starmer might have insisted on inspecting all documentation. So kudos to them both for standing their ground.

In his analysis (“Shame of the Tories who tried to smear Angela Rayner as a tax crook”, Tuesday 28 May), The Independent’s John Rentoul is correct: Rayner has been the victim of class prejudice – but has turned the tables on the Tory’s mendacious pursuit of her. There will, of course, be battles ahead, but Rayner has shown that she is not a woman to mess with.

Judith Daniels

Norfolk

As long as a Liz Truss lettuce

So, after weeks of being under scrutiny, Rayner is finally off the hook and free to campaign as the true professional she is. Whatever ambitions certain Tories had of bringing her down have lasted as long as a Liz Truss lettuce.

Meanwhile, it has now emerged that the Tories’ much-trumpeted triple-lock-plus pension plan is worth just 28p per week.

All this must just add to the biggest Tory headache to date – and, of course, the party still has to fill the vacancies of up to 160 missing parliamentary candidates.

Geoffrey Brooking

Address supplied

Do the day job

An immediate point of difference in early election campaigning is that the Tories keep pumping out ideas for future policies as part of their so-called “plan”.

Their desperation – not to mention 14 years of failure – is crushing them.

Meanwhile, Labour has realised what the public already knew. If we can’t fix our public services and economy, all the future policy ideas in the world cannot be achieved or afforded.

I genuinely don’t care whether Starmer is dull as ditch water, so long as he and his party stay the course and do the day job!

John Sinclair

Pocklington

Scraped from a Treasury barrel

The concept of mandatory national service proposed by the Conservatives, whether military or social services-orientated, is in my opinion, an appealing way to provide a sense of purpose and be character-forming.

However, at a time when we cannot send naval ships to sea for lack of highly skilled crews, nor sustain a war in Europe beyond a month or so (as we are told by senior army officers), when service men, women and their families are living in poor housing and the NHS is faltering with a lack of doctors, surely we should be devoting such scarce resources as can be scraped from a Treasury barrel to resolving these issues first?

Maybe then we can consider volunteer programmes for teenagers (“National service would only be a hindrance to our already depleted armed forces”, Wednesday, 29 May).

Robert Forsyth

Deddington

The moral failure is our own

It’s easy to blame Hamas and it’s easy to blame Israel. But we, the West, are profoundly complicit in the tragedy of Palestine. It is the West that has indulged Israel’s oppression of Palestinians since 1967 – the casual cruelty, the annexations and settlements, the collective punishments.

At no point has the West drawn a line and held Israel to account. Even today we see our politicians more frightened of accusations of antisemitism than outraged by the slaughter of civilians. We’re looking not simply at Israeli atrocities, but our own moral failure.

David McDowall

Richmond

Reform’s true colours

I see that Reform UK leader Richard Tice and his buddies have shown their true colours in the controversy surrounding Labour’s plan to impose VAT on fee-paying schools.

Threatening to take the next government to the European Court of Human Rights – after their innumerable calls for the UK to leave such an institution – confirms what many of us always suspected: that the Reform Party and the wider Brexit brigade want to remove human rights from everyone except themselves.

They should be aware of the consequences of their populist actions.

Robert Boston

Kent