The ghosts of Tory past can’t help Rishi now

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

‘The inclusion of Boris Johnson and David Cameron in the election will undoubtedly push more voters towards other parties’ (PA)

After 14 years of mismanagement, deceitful governance and obfuscation, Rishi Sunak compounds his party’s disgrace by enlisting the assistance of David Cameron and Boris Johnson to gain much-needed votes.

Cameron gave us Brexit, and Johnson “got it done”. Both former PMs are tainted with failure.

What on earth were the Conservatives thinking of when this plan was hatched? The inclusion of these two men in the election will undoubtedly push even more voters towards other parties.

The number of gaffes and mistakes the prime minister and his cohorts have made is eye-watering. Whoever is leading the election management for the Conservatives has done the other parties many favours.

Thank goodness Keir Starmer decided not to bring Tony Blair into the fight – that would have been a retrograde step for the Labour campaign.

While there is nothing earth-shattering in the Labour manifesto, it contains solid, considered changes for a safer future. Keep going, Starmer!

Keith Poole

Basingstoke

Tories vs Reform is a sideshow

In this election, the total number of Tory and Reform voters is unlikely to go up significantly. Right now, the parties – both of which are viewed as untrustworthy and the source of many of our problems – are busy fighting each other in a one-on-one battle that neither can win separately.

The return of Johnson will not help the Tories redeem themselves, and Nigel Farage’s appeal appears to be a xenophobic populism. Their parties’ squabble now provides something of a sideshow.

But both Johnson and Farage were major promoters of Brexit, possibly our greatest act of self-harm. The consequences of Covid mismanagement and corruption are painfully fresh in the minds of many. The run-down state of the NHS stands shoulder to shoulder with it.

Those actions are amply supplemented by the Truss-led Conservatives’ especially damaging “special fiscal event”, to the delight of the hedge fund managers who entertained Kwasi Kwarteng on the eve of that destruction with a “champagne reception”. The rest of us will live with the consequences of that mugging for some considerable time.

Many more harmful failures of the past 14 years come to mind. It will be a relief when, as seems likely, the country is run by a government that values public service above exploitation.

This country could do without the right wing’s brand of home entertainment.

David Nelmes

Newport

National service is a nonsensical gimmick

Can anyone from the Tory party explain in detail the consequences of the government’s so-called “flagship policy”, which has already been described by Lord West and others, as utter nonsense?

Under a new mandatory national service scheme, every 18-year-old would have to sign up to serve their country – yet there will be only 30,000 places in the military, for more than 700,000 18-year-olds.

Will those who have left school at 16 and managed to find employment have to give up work for a year? What about those hoping to start a university course? And why is the length of the military option just a meaningless 25 days?

It’s clear this whole exercise is an ill-thought-out political stunt designed to appease old Tory voters who think a good dose of army discipline is what our young people need – when it is really nothing of the kind.

Geoff Forward

Stirling

No place for Farage in a one-nation Tory party

The most frightening aspect of Farage’s wish to take over or replace the Conservative Party is that he talks openly of wanting to create what he calls a new “centre-right” party.

Historically, the centre-right has been represented by one-nation Tories. Yet to Farage (and many of his sympathisers on the right), such policies and beliefs have now shifted to become distinctly “left wing”.

Many have rightly described Farage’s policies as “nasty, reckless and extreme” – and indeed they are. But cementing these policies as the centre-right of British politics would be a catastrophic and cataclysmic realignment. It would open the way for even further-right, and possibly even fascist, politics, marginalising those with hitherto centre-right, centrist or left-of-centre views.

Philip Nalpanis

Address Supplied