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Your support makes all the difference.It is astonishing to see that some of Boris Johnson’s supporters are trumpeting his green credentials.
Zac Goldsmith said yesterday on Twitter that Johnson would be “the greenest prime minister our country has ever had”.
This comes one week after Johnson suggested he would drop his opposition to Heathrow expansion if he got the keys to No 10. When the vote took place in the Commons, Johnson felt that a meeting in Afghanistan was more important than metaphorically lying down in front of the bulldozers, to oppose expansion.
When he was foreign secretary, he oversaw cuts of 60 per cent in the number of climate attaches around the world.
Those clamouring for a ministerial job can claim what they like about his record, but the facts speak for themselves.
Chris Key
Address supplied
BBC Tory leadership debate
Holby City would have been more edifying.
Lynda Newbery
Bristol
I can’t decide whether I want Rory Stewart to win the Conservative leadership contest because he seems to be the only candidate with a grain of sense, or whether I’d plump for Boris Johnson on the grounds that, given enough rope, he’d soon hang both himself and his party. (I mean that figuratively, of course – I don’t want to be accused, as Jo Brand was, of inciting violence.)
But, like the great majority of people, I’m not a member of the party. So my opinion doesn’t matter in the least, does it?
Susan Alexander
Frampton Cotterell
Rory Stewart. Thoughtful chap. Tory membership won’t like him for wanting to freeze personal taxation at present rates and to invest in public services. Best leader the Labour Party never had.
Patrick Cosgrove
Bucknell
The bigots are in charge
Yesterday teenaged neo-Nazis were imprisoned for inciting racial hatred and encouraging acts of terrorism against a member of the royal family. So far so good.
Oddly, the sitting US president who praised neo-Nazis at Charlottesville where an anti-Nazi protester was mowed down and killed faced no sanctions. In the UK, two faces that besmirch TV screens nightly are those of Nigel Farage who has – among other things – echoed Enoch Powell’s Rivers of Blood speech with his racist ad campaigns for Brexit, and Boris Johnson, who insulted President Obama and mocked women in Burkas. The latter ex-Etonian is odds-on favourite to be our next prime minister.
So if you are going to be a racist, it seems advisable to also ensure you are rich one running for high public office.
Amanda Baker
Edinburgh
What’s happened to the Tory party?
Polling showing 61 per cent of Conservative Party members would accept the break up of the UK and significant damage to the economy in order to achieve Brexit should be extremely worrying, given they are about to choose their next leader. What happened to the Tory party mantra: “The economy is safe in our hands”?
Paul Davies
Oxford
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