The rats are fleeing – but we have to clean up the mess

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Fearing either rejection at the polls, or the lack of power that serving in the opposition entails, hordes of Conservative MPs are leaping like lemmings over a cliff (AFP via Getty Images)

So the rats are leaving the sinking ship – after enjoying their trip on the gravy train!

Fearing either rejection at the polls, or the lack of power that serving in the opposition entails, hordes of Conservative MPs are leaping like lemmings over a cliff.

To be charitable, some may have good reasons in terms of health, age, family or just time served. Some may actually have consciences and principles, and genuinely believe that they can no longer stand for a self-serving party that long ago lost its moral compass and any pretence of caring for the majority, and has drifted into murky xenophobic right-wing extremism.

The rest are just slithering off into the undergrowth (or, more likely, well-paid jobs) clutching their generous pensions and payoffs.

While I for one will not be sorry to see them go, they are leaving the mess they have created for the rest of us to suffer and the next government to clear up.

Mike Margetts

Kilsby

Leave voters had their chance to show us the benefits of Brexit – what now?

In the nicest way possible I’d like to disagree with Judith Daniels, and her worry that we may offend the sensibilities of the Leave voters if we make more than a timid attempt at reconciliation with Europe.

The whole Brexit fiasco was built on lies, false promises, more exaggerated lies and scaremongering, the con of “sovereignty” and, I suspect, of some benefit to our wealthy elite.

Anyone with half an ounce of common sense can see the state the country’s in. Adding an estimated £40bn to our economy by rejoining Europe and including a wealth tax for all the UK companies who profited by upping their prices more than they needed to during the cost of living crisis to get themselves a bigger bonus, should give the country some money to start repairing the damage that has been done.

Leave voters have had plenty of time to show that leaving was a good decision. It’s time to accept they were conned by Boris Johnson’s lies, and Nigel Farage’s scare stories about an invasion of Europeans.

It’s time to really put the great back into Britain and rejoin the EEC, before we become an isolated island that Russia can pick on.

Ken Twiss

Address supplied

A comedy of errors – but nobody’s laughing

So, as if almost 100 MPs deserting the Conservative Party like rats leaving a sinking ship on the same day as Rishi Sunak visited the Titanic Museum in Belfast wasn’t bad enough, we now have another round of Tory infighting.

First Andrea Leadsom and her friends from the Conservative Post demand that the right-wing Lord Frost be put back on the Tory candidates list, and then no sooner does she get her way than she joins a chorus calling for Boris Johnson to be put back on it too.

Add to this Rishi Sunak’s team saying that he was going to have a duvet day on Saturday only to go out in Richmond in Yorkshire in the morning and Wimbledon in the afternoon, and we’ve already had more U-turns in a day than Maggie Thatcher used to have in a year.

Meanwhile Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour goes from strength to strength!

Geoffrey Brooking

Hampshire

Own goal after own goal

I am hoping that your suggestion that Keir Starmer is keeping his powder dry on closer links with the EU so as not to frighten the “Leave horses” is correct. I have always been completely opposed to Brexit and I would challenge anyone to suggest a single positive outcome that has resulted from cutting loose from Europe.

To take just one example, immigration; many productive EU workers lost but net immigration higher. Another complete own goal is the increased costs of both imports and exports, particularly of fresh produce, due to totally unnecessary border checks. I could cite many more if space permitted.

David Felton

Cheshire

National service is exactly what young people need

The restoration of national service would instil discipline, respect and an understanding of team playing which so many young people need. A bold but a necessary move to help standards of morals and behaviour in society.

Jonathan Longstaff

Address supplied