Will this government trash Magna Carta next?

Letters to the editor: our readers share their views. Please send your letters to letters@independent.co.uk

It has often been the charge that as far as this government is concerned, it is one rule for them and a different rule for the rest of us (PA)

Another day, another regressive piece of legislation. Why doesn’t the government just announce their plans to repeal Magna Carta, as “no longer fit for purpose in the modern age”?

One thing more than anything else that would get me out canvassing for change would be a promise from both Labour and the Lib Dems to repeal this and the rest of the government’s rights-infringing recent legislation – the Nationality and Borders Act, the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act and others already forgotten.

I have learnt from my experience of the Blair government that opposition parties often find law that they oppose in the making becomes convenient when they in turn form the government.

So an on-record commitment to repeal will be handy when the time comes.

Rachael Padman

Newmarket

Bill of No Rights

It has often been the charge that as far as this government is concerned, it is one rule for them and a different rule for the rest of us.

Now we see that they intend to take this a step further by enshrining this principle in law, by exempting the government from the effect of their proposed Bill of Rights. Maybe it should be renamed the Bill of No Rights.

G Forward

Stirling

Dear Mum

I understand the need for his anonymity as your writer comes down heavily on his parent in this weekend’s Voices piece. I’m not sure he has given enough thought to how and why his mother, a proxy for all who might think her way, has come to her current worldview.

In a couple of weeks, thankfully, I will be 76 years old. Remarkably, I am still married to my wife of 50 years. We had two children and not as many grandchildren as I would have wished. With gratitude, all in all, I look back on loving and being loved.

Your writer should not be so critical of his mother. Our culture is dynamic, changing at glacial pace sometimes, and at a cataclysmic speed at others. Each generation tests and pushes the boundaries on what is accepted.

I remember as a young man having heated arguments with my father, who supported capital punishment. Nothing is more dynamic than our language, which is constantly on the move.

In my time, the meaning of words that were in everyday use has completely changed. If the writer reaches old age, he too will find that hardwired opinions and feelings forged now will not be acceptable to others in the future, who will be in the process of changing their culture.

My hope is that we will develop a less binary view of others’ opinions.

G Barlow

Wirral

Labour should differentiate itself on Brexit

It is really depressing that Sir Keir Starmer is so afraid of the electorate that he has rejected the most obvious way of making a clear distinction between Labour and the Tories at the next general election.

He is putting aside his own beliefs and those of most of his MPs and probably a majority of his supporters, in endorsing Brexit but saying he will try to make it work a little better. Good luck with that!

He must know perfectly well the hundred and one ways in which Brexit has already seriously undermined the British economy and damaged our relations with Europe and our international standing. He should have the courage of his convictions to devote the election campaign (whoever may then be leading the Tories) to explaining why we need the single market, the Customs Union and free movement within Europe.

The voters are not stupid, but were very poorly briefed (by both sides) during the referendum campaign. Now is the opportunity to start setting out the issues more coherently.

Also, Starmer must know that in a hung parliament, the Lib Dems will insist on reopening some of these issues as the price for propping up a minority Labour government.

The resurgent Lib Dems will no doubt have further significant gains because, in a general election, the hardcore Remain vote will now have nowhere else to go, in England particularly.

Gavin Turner

Norfolk

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Equal marriage

Can I just point out that although David Cameron was prime minister at the time, marriage equality was achieved despite the Conservative Party,  rather than because of the Conservative Party.

Please don’t give them credit for something that 136 MPs voted against, and on which about 40 abstained. Some Conservative MPs said their own marriages would be diminished by allowing same-sex marriage, which is shameful and embarrassing, not to say bigoted.

The sky did not fall down, and so far God hasn’t shown his disapproval.

Ken Twiss

Yarm