If MPs want to earn more money, they should quit and find another job

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

Boris Johnson and his cronies are adept at enlarging the ‘Overton window’ (Getty)

Boris Johnson is absolutely right to demand that MPs who break the rules are punished.

However, if you are always moving the goalposts, as was clear in the case of Owen Paterson, it’s going to be very hard to punish anyway. Which is exactly why we need people in parliament working full time for their constituents. If MPs can’t get on the ministerial gravy train and want to earn more money then they can always get another job and give somebody else a chance.

Geoffrey Brooking

Hampshire

Second jobs and sleaze

While I carry no torch for MPs with outside jobs that distract from constituency work, I find it hard to see a difference in principle between that and MPs who hold well-paid ministerial appointments that have the same effect. In many ways it’s worse because, as we have seen, it gives them the opportunity to divert taxpayers’ funds to friends in business or to their own constituencies at the expense of others.

Many people are calling for a ban on MPs having outside jobs, which I support if it includes ministerial appointments. The truth is that, in the UK, there is virtually no separation of powers between the legislature and the executive, so the Commons is rife with built-in conflicts of interest. There are other unfortunate consequences such as the great offices of state being headed by small-town politicians with no experience of managing a large organisation, nor any relevant specialist knowledge.

Throw into the mix a sense of invulnerability engendered in the government by an electoral system that can be gamed to deliver an 80-seat majority on a 1.2 per cent vote swing when 70 per cent of the electorate either votes for a losing party or doesn’t vote at all (probably because their vote would make no difference) and it’s hardly surprising that we get scoundrels and nest featherers in charge.

I stand with those recent correspondents who are ashamed of their country’s government but, frankly, we the electorate have allowed it to happen and there’s so much wrong it’s going to take a seismic shift of some sort to put things right.

Geoffrey Downs

Bradford

There is a thing called the “Overton window”. It’s defined as the range of policies politically acceptable to the mainstream population at a given time. Boris Johnson and his cronies are adept at enlarging this window. All you have to do is keep repeating what you want the audience to believe until, however outrageous it is, it becomes the norm.

The other technique is to keep denying something you don’t want them to believe. Hence the brazen announcement by our canny prime minister that the UK is “not remotely a corrupt country”. I note that he refers to the country, not its leaders.

I appeal to all your readers to keep the Overton window no more than ajar, and to alert all their friends to this phenomenon.

Lynda Newbery

Bristol

Boris Johnson says the UK is “not remotely a corrupt country”. Never believe anything until it has been officially denied.

Nat Langdon

Essex

This country is not corrupt. This government and its leaders are, particularly Boris Johnson.

Andrew Milroy

Address supplied

Has Boris Johnson forgotten Cop26?

Could there be any starker indication of the entirely justified contempt in which Boris Johnson is held by the grown-up leaders of the world than the way he has been sidelined by China and the US as they reached a critically important climate agreement at Cop26, which Johnson was supposed to be hosting? Or was it that they might not have bypassed him if they had been able to catch him during one of his very fleeting token visits to the conference to hector the delegates?

My guess is that Johnson’s hypocritical refusal to rule out the opening of new oil fields and a new coal mine prior to the conference made the American and Chinese delegates realise that it would be a waste of time talking to him about fossil fuels.

D Maughan Brown

York

Reverse ferret

Salma Shah’s piece, (When to cut your losses: the art of the political U-turn, Voices, 10 November) defines the “reverse ferret” thus: “the kind of reneging that requires herculean levels of self-delusion, a pretence that a certain policy didn’t mean what everyone thought it did, and anyway, it’s not happening now”.

In my book the worst “reverse ferret” jumps duplicitously further: it utterly fails to acknowledge the sudden change in policy or editorial line, or deceptively transmutes from one position to another.

David Cameron’s promise fundamentally to change the EU soon after morphed into the promise of a referendum. Boris Johnson’s denial of the applicability of the EU withdrawal agreement. Both are recent egregious examples.

Steven Fogel

Address supplied

Brand bargains

The article by Hannah Fearn on the crisp crisis (Forget Tory sleaze – a Christmas crisp crisis will cost Boris Johnson his red wall majority, Voices, 10 November) mentioned how patriotic the British were about their favourite brands.

I wonder if she knows what has happened to these brands in my lifetime? Walkers now American-owned. HP Sauce now American-owned and made in the Netherlands. Branston now Japanese-owned. Heinz always American-owned. Hobnobs now Turkish-owned. Cadbury’s now American-owned. Kit Kat and Quality Street now Swiss-owned. At least we still partly have Marmite owned by the Anglo Dutch Unilever.

Brexit Britain takes back control?

Martyn Wilson

Farnborough

Women’s rights in the UAE

Baroness Kennedy’s article (It’s an illusion that women’s rights are now protected in the United Arab Emirates, Voices, 7 November) gave a false picture of the situation of women in my country, based entirely – so far as I could see – on the testimony of a small number of British women. She does not appear to have spoken to a single Emirati. As a former female parliamentarian in the UAE and co-founder of a foundation to help victims of domestic violence there, I would like to add my very different perspective.

I lived through my own country’s transformation, from my life as a teenager in a conservative family who did not want me to go to university, to a present day when I have been a member of our parliament and 70 per cent of graduates are women, as are a third of the cabinet and half the parliament; every government body must by law have women on its board; and women have 66 per cent of public sector jobs.

We are not helpless victims of our men. We are wives and mothers, as well as teachers, policewomen, astronauts, civilian and fighter pilots, singers, actors, fashion designers and models, ministers, and members of parliament.

And yes, much of this progress was due to laws introduced by our leadership, requiring government bodies to have women on their board of directors, enforcing maternity and paternity leave, and requiring companies to provide workplace nurseries.

There is still work to do in protecting the most vulnerable women in our society. Domestic violence continues to be a problem, due not to inadequate laws but the lack of awareness among women of their legal rights. But it is deeply offensive to me as an Emirati woman to see articles published in the British press that claim to judge my country based entirely on the views and experiences of European women. I hope this letter can serve as a corrective.

Afra Albasti

UAE

Appease Cleese, please

I feel Katie Edwards is wrong to say John Cleese made a daft remark on Twitter (’Self-cancelling’ is a great way to boost your profile – just ask John Cleese’, Voices, 10 November). What he has done is expose the inconsistency of his invitation (given his Hitler impressions are very well known, at least by anyone aware of Monty Python or Fawlty Towers) and the cancelling – or blacklisting – of Andrew Graham Dixon for doing something very similar.

T Foster

Colchester