The sooner Boris Johnson goes the better

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

Prime minister Boris Johnson is facing difficult questions again (AP)

So another lockdown-busting “gathering” at No 10 comes to light and prime minister Boris Johnson refuses to deny he attended, which of course means he did.

I have made every attempt to be supportive of this government’s efforts through some of the most challenging times in recent history. But the endless deception, lies and the ducking and diving mean I have now lost all respect for these people, especially the prime minister. The sooner they are forced from power the better for us all.

Steve Edmondson

Cambridge

I have searched through the relevant Covid regulations applicable at the time of the No 10 parties and for the life of me cannot find an exemption for those who, according to Michael Fabricant, were working “incredibly hard”. Is there a secret set of exemptions somewhere?

Maurizio Moore

Chelmsford

Does it really matter if Boris Johnson attended the BYOB shindig? It’s just as important whether he knew that the event was proposed. And what were the police detail at No 10 doing that evening? Perhaps they joined in.

Claire Casson

Address supplied

The invitation to Downing Street staff to attend, at virtually the last moment, a get together in the garden and to bring their “own booze” does rather infer that, at every level, such events are regular enough for everyone to keep alcohol under their desks or to slip out to an off-licence (and I have difficulty in picturing any of them remotely close to No 10) in working hours. Any employee of mine so indulging over the years would have been formally reprimanded at best.

John Scott Moncrieff

Edinburgh

It is a bit unfair for politicians to blame Boris Johnson for not sorting out energy prices. After all, we must get our priorities right first. Johnson has not yet sorted the redecoration of No 10, also there are this year’s garden parties to arrange. I would think some new garden furniture and bottles of plonk must come first on the “to do” list.

Mike Coomber

Address supplied

Energy price crisis

Simple economics and common sense can help solve, at least partially, the looming energy price crisis. The key word here is “spike”. There seems to be general agreement that the current price rises are in large part exacerbated, if not caused, by demand side factors. Put simply, the several fold increase in prices that we see do not reflect cost increases (extraction, delivery etc) of the same magnitude.

Faced with rises in market prices significantly in excess of cost rises, someone somewhere in the supply chain is making a surplus in the form of a windfall gain. Locating and taxing such gains (or Ricardian rents as economists like to call them) is a sensible policy, not least because by their very nature as a surplus, their taxation will have little, if any, effect on the behaviour of the party paying the tax. This is contrary to the view expressed by Ian McNicholas (‘The Labour Party is showing off its economic illiteracy again’, Letters, 10 January).

One recipient of such a windfall gain is none other than HM Treasury. With a fixed rate of taxation on energy bills (5 per cent), a doubling of bills leads to a doubling of the amount of such tax revenue accruing to Rishi Sunak. At the very least, HM Treasury could and should set the rate of tax on energy bills at zero for amounts billed in excess of “normal”.

David Sapsford

Edward Gonner professor of applied economics (Emeritus), University of Liverpool

Ian McNicholas (Letters, 10 January) presumes that, should Labour’s plan come into being, there would be no controls on the waterfall effect he expects, thereby demonstrating the traditional Tory view of economics. This theory  would indeed be valid in a world based on such simplistic principles, but a bit of enlightened thinking can and must eventually lead to a better deal for everyone instead of his anticipated outcome.

It is the type of effect he describes which over many decades and governments has got us into the present mess from which we will escape only by being willing to adopt radical new social, political and economic thinking. Our present leadership is too blinkered to take us there, but we need to recognise the need for change as a matter of urgency.

Vic Gaunt

Bolton