The Lib Dem by-election win shows Labour needs to work with other opposition parties

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Ed Davey shortly after the by-election victory on Friday (PA)

The second most significant feature of the Chesham and Amersham by-election is the precipitous fall in the Labour vote.

The electorate is sending a clear message to opposition parties – formally or informally, you must cooperate to defeat the Conservatives. A good start would be working together on shared policy objectives, of which there are so many. A shortlist would include:

• Shaping a more responsible capitalism, and ending the massive disparities of wealth and income which disfigure our country;

• Serious devolution to the English regions and localities;

• Building a green economy; and

• Electoral reform to permit pluralist politics.

How about cross-party policy working groups on all these topics?

Philip Goldenberg

Woking

The vote in Chesham and Amersham was not so much against the “blue wall”, it’s obviously against HS2

Rosemary Mathew

Cambridge

Life is hard

If Boris Johnson were still in his journalistic pulpit he would have been offering tirades about further Covid restrictions. But real life isn’t so easy, eh?

Similarly, the EU offers a few more challenges than he would have conceded in his column writing days.

Lynn Brymer

Ashford

Next up

First we had useless Eustace, now we have hopeless Hancock (expletive optional). How long before we all benefit from jobless Johnson?

G Forward

Stirling

Pension plan

If we want a mechanical analogy for the state pension triple lock, it's not a lock, it's a ratchet. A ratchet is a device that moves something in only one direction when a motion goes back and forth, and the triple lock pension does just that.

If average earnings fall by, say, 5 per cent one year (eg 2020), the pension goes up by 2.5 per cent, then earnings rise by, say 6 per cent the next year (eg 2021), the pension goes up by 6 per cent.

If earnings and inflation progress smoothly year on year, it's not so bad, but as soon as there is fluctuation, the ratchet effect comes into play. As a pensioner I’m uncomfortable that I may benefit disproportionately at the expense of other sectors of society, but then I didn’t vote for the party of the triple lock.

It should not be beyond the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, to devise a policy that makes sure pensioners don’t lose out, while ensuring they don’t make out like bandits.

David Watson

Henley-on-Thames