I've always voted Tory – but Brexit has changed my mind

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(Reuters)

Just flicking through my online copy today, in Portugal. Dan Snow’s article on Brexit completely sums up how so many of the “silenced Remainers” feel.

I am 61, have enjoyed a pretty good life, always been able to work, have three wonderful children, two grandchildren. But I no longer have any real say in their future. I have voted Conservative almost exclusively in past years, but never again will I vote for the shambles of a party. They have no real thought or consideration for what’s right for the country and are entirely focused on their personal idealogical goals.

How can it be wrong to allow everyone to have a final say on such a critically important decision that, as Dan says, is irreversible for me and all my family, down to my four-year-old grandson who started his first day at school yesterday. I can’t believe how strongly I feel about this which, I guess, is why the Brexiteers are hanging onto the original result so tightly.

Two hundred years ago, it would have been civil war, today it could be accomplished democratically with a final vote. It’s way too important to leave it to the maniacs we have voted into government.

John Whyman​​
Ipswich

Blair is no moderate

Is the Tony Blair currently expressing “worry” in the media that “moderates” may not be able to take back control of the Labour Party the same Tony Blair who had a recent self-confessed “warm” meeting with Italy’s deputy prime minister, the openly fascist and rabidly anti-immigrant, Matteo Salvini?

Is it the same Tony Blair who recently admitted that the non-government organisation set up under his name has received donations of up to $12m (£9.3m) from the tyranny of Saudi Arabia?

Is it the same Tony Blair who enabled the invasion of Iraq which left over a million Iraqis dead and which turned the region into an abattoir?

He doesn’t seem much of a “moderate” to me.

Sasha Simic
​London, N16 5DG

The Lib Dems are the centre ground

With parliament back from recess, the prospect of a new, middle ground party is on the agenda again. But why bother with all the time-consuming machinations of creating new structures, devising new policies and writing new rules?

The no-deal Brexit clock is ticking. The majority of people wanting a new political home will be of a liberal or liberal-ish persuasion. If the Lib Dems are offering them a home, surely that’s the place to go in order to reverse Brexit? Apart from the tuition fees betrayal – now history – why the reluctance? What’s required is a Justine Greening or a Chuka Umunna to start it off.

Patrick Cosgrove
Bucknell

We need to reform our energy system to benefit the poor

Your correspondent wrote on Thursday that as a result of the proposed energy price cap, households will save £1bn a year. Call me an old cynic but does anyone really believe that the income of our privatised energy sellers will be reduced or will there merely be a levelling off of charges, so while some will save others will lose?

G Forward
Stirling

The government is proposing further tinkering with the energy market in another effort to make the market work.

Putting yet another minor obstacle in the way of energy companies’ relentless drive to higher prices and bigger profits will do little to mend this broken chaotic market.

A complete rethink about electricity pricing is needed. Instead of placing a disproportionate burden on low users and poorer families more of the burden should go on the higher and wealthier users. These higher users are partly driving the need for more electricity and it is reasonable that they should bear more of the burden of building more generating plants.

Standing charges should be abandoned as should the practice of charging more per kWh for the first few units used. Instead the first units used by a customer should be at the cheapest rate (maybe even at a government set price). The electricity used above this threshold should become more expensive and at a rate set in supply contracts. This way the less well off and prudent users will be looked after and the better off higher and more profligate users will pay more towards profits and (hopefully) investment in a new plant.

Ashley Herbert
Huddersfield

How did the Skripal assassins not become contaminated?

Around the beginning of March this year, two innocent people were taken very seriously ill in Salisbury. The nature of their predicament quickly led authorities to suspect contamination by some sort of chemical agent. When they turned out to be Russian, it was also deemed to be deliberate. When all of this turned out to be true, within hours, some of the streets of Salisbury and some surrounding areas were taped and cordoned off from everybody except the authorities.

Men, and maybe women, arrived in special anti-contamination suits, businesses were closed, many people suffered, and sadly one person lost their life. The focus moved I believe to Tisbury and then on to Amesbury. Cars were wrapped in cling film and dragged away, and some were buried including, I believe, a police vehicle. Fast forward to last week. The two perpetrators were named in the house. Given identities. And within hours there were stills on the TV of these people passing through the airport, quite legitimately, on Salisbury station, window shopping and wandering down Fisherton Street before paying a visit to the Skripals’ house.

My point is that all these people were in lockdown, protected by police and men in special gear, and yet the two agents enter our country, catch a train to Salisbury, deliver a near fatal dose of one of the most powerful poisons known to man, and leave the country in the same manner… dressed only in puffer jackets and not even a pair of gloves. To be in constant contact with this substance and not be contaminated is to me, amazing. Or did we overreact?

David Higgins
Yeovil