Brexit benefits? What Brexit benefits?

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

The one-year anniversary of Brexit is approaching (PA Archive)

With the first year anniversary of Brexit on 1 January, perhaps this is the right time for an article detailing all the positive aspects of the deal for the UK.

Alternatively, you could just write the headline “Brexit Benefits” and leave the rest of the page blank.

Sarah Pegg

Edinburgh

Tory Story

The message of today’s editorial is even more disturbing when set in a broader context. It shows that once again, key government decisions affecting the whole nation are being decided, not by what is necessarily in the best interests of the country, but by the interplay of forces within the Conservative Party.

Virtually every health expert in the country is crying out for more stringent measures to deal with the Omicron variant. Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and most of the rest of Europe are all taking action. The NHS is facing huge and increasing pressure and there are real concerns about schools staying open next term. Yet in England, nothing is being done beyond plan B and some wishy-washy, take-it-or-leave-it guidance.

Why? Because Boris Johnson is so weakened that he is fearful of the power of his right-wing backbenchers. The needs of the whole nation appear to be secondary to the needs of the Conservative Party and the personal ambitions of its MPs. Thus, the last decade has become yet another episode of the soap “Tory Story”, with Johnson and his friends driving the narrative.

Is this really how a country should be run?

M T Harris

Grimsby

England is out of step

I read today that Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown MP, treasurer of the 1922 Committee, considers that the “principalities” are “out of step with England”.

The devolved administrations are notably “in step” with the US,  France, Holland, Ireland and the majority of European nations who have all chosen to place the safety of their populations above the profit motive.

A circuit breaker for schools combined with the funding of high efficiency, particulate air filters in schools would have been the actions of a caring government, intent on protecting our children and reducing infection in the wider community.

But no. The Tories are in the pocket of their donors who control policy through the agency of their delegates in the cabinet and the extreme right-wing pressure groups now roaming around the halls of Westminster, picking up their monthly stipends, as the majority of people ignore their invocation to recklessly put their lives in peril.

Bill O’Hara

Glasgow

GP closures

Why can a local GP surgery be allowed to close for 8 days over Christmas and the new year, when hospitals and minor injury centres stay open and have the added burden of all the sick people who need help over this period?

J Longstaff

East Sussex

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Hypocrisy in the wake of Desmond Tutu’s death

Keir Starmer paying tribute to the recently deceased anti-apartheid, anti-capitalist legend Desmond Tutu was a masterclass in political hypocrisy. Starmer rightly recognised the fact that Tutu “dedicated his life to tackling injustice and standing up for the oppressed”.

One of the oppressed groups Tutu expressed solidarity with was the people of Palestine, and he identified their oppression as coming from the apartheid state of Israel. Tutu supported the use of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) tactics against Israel to ensure that “one day people will walk tall in a free Palestine”.

Starmer has spent the last few years doing little else but purging the Labour Party of activists whose politics were in harmony with Tutu’s.

Sasha Simic

London