I used to be proud of being British – but I’m not anymore

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

My country is now besmirched by the illegal and inhumane actions of the government (REUTERS)

I used to be proud of being British. Alas, no more.

My country is now besmirched by the illegal and inhumane actions of the government, purportedly in my name.

Except they aren’t in my name, nor in that of the majority of the population; instead we are beholden to the self-serving whim of the 211 Tory MPs who supported Johnson in the confidence vote.

I find it ironic that it is the party of Churchill and Thatcher that is now destroying Britain’s reputation through the incompetent and insincere distractions of a lying, entitled and dishonourable clown and his bunch of second rate sycophants.

Tim Sidaway

Hertfordshire

We are all complicit

Your front page article is a chilling read that should be shown to anyone who believes that the Johnson government has the right to continue in office.

Rasool’s belief that he would be safe from persecution in the UK has been turned on its head; when he says “I knew it was a democratic country and I now know that is a lie”, he confirms what many of us have felt to be an increasing threat over the last three years.

In order to maintain his grip on power, Johnson is turning this country into an autocracy where the rule of law is disregarded. International law and human rights lawyers are now being cast as the enemy by a home secretary with a pitifully shallow understanding of the moral principles that bind us together as human beings.

The daily assault on our nation’s values and democracy has been validated by a Conservative Party that has gifted Johnson another year in which to degrade us still further.

With his past record, he should never have become leader of his party, been elected as prime minister or allowed to continue in office as a law-breaker. While he continues in power, we are all complicit partners in the human rights abuses that Rasool and others are suffering in our name.

Graham Powell

Cirencester

Moral compass

This is totally shameful. I am disgusted by our government.

My mother was a refugee from Nazi Europe. When people risk everything to come to the UK they are looking for a better life. What has happened to the moral compass of this green and pleasant land?

Juliette Sonabend

London

People traffickers

The excuse now being trucked out which allows the Home Office and its agents to treat asylum seekers harshly and inhumanely is to protect their human rights from abuse and exploitation by evil people traffickers.

And any criticism of this twisted logic is described as unpatriotic!

Ron Mure

Mansfield

Shaped by old men

Harry Cockburn’s article on climate change should be carefully considered by anyone under the age of 50.

The world they find themselves in, in the year 2050, will be a world largely shaped by today’s older men. If they want to limit the damage to the world, they must get involved in political machinery now. By 2050, it may well be too late.

Martin Cross

Southampton

A stuntman for prime minister

Tory peer Baroness Helena Morrissey resigned from her Foreign Office post after saying that Boris Johnson was in the “wrong job” and should resign.

Despite being sacked for making up facts when he was a journalist at the Times newspaper, Johnson does have some limited experience as a journalist. Obsessed with headlines, he is desperate to avoid negative ones – hence his “dead cat” strategy of coming up with often weird and strange initiatives to grab headlines and deflect attention away from Tory scandals or incompetence.

Bridges were a common “big idea” – a bridge across the Channel was proposed to distract from the failures of the Brexit process, a bridge from Scotland to Northern Ireland when the trading agreement for Northern Ireland proved unworkable. Neither transport link had any reality.

Such headline-grabbing stunts are just that. Stunts to generate headlines, not researched or even priced on the back of an envelope. A distraction, dreamt up on the spur of the moment with no serious consideration or thought. His spineless ministers are then repeatedly parachuted in to defend these new “policies”.

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There is an old saying: “Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me”. Johnson has been pulling these stunts for years, but now increasingly the public have rumbled Johnson, as one of his backbenchers complained dejectedly: “And the rumbling process is only likely to get worse”

On 6 June, 148 Tory backbenchers declared that they had no confidence in Johnson’s premiership. The prime minister had lobbied them intensively before that vote, but they took a leaf out of Johnson’s own playbook, telling Johnson one thing and then doing another. After the vote, one of Johnson’s allies said angrily: “Tory MPs are a bunch of lying snakes, I don’t trust anything they say.”

Now Boris Johnson’s ethics adviser Lord Geidt has resigned, after saying there was a "legitimate question" over whether the PM had broken ministerial rules over Partygate. (The second ethics advisor to resign in less than two years!) Who on earth will Johnson get to take over this thankless ethics role?

Pete Milory

Trowbridge