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With Priti Patel in the Home Office, I don’t think Question Time-style rants will go away

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Saturday 22 February 2020 14:38 GMT
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BBC criticised for sharing Question Time audience member's anti-immigration rant

I too watched open-mouthed at the racist rant on last week’s Question Time and found myself shouting at the television, to stop this woman in her vitriolic tracks. It seemed to go on for an eternity and it was absolutely dire that this mindset is still alive – it seems like some people just need any available platform to vent their feelings.

As to the BBC sharing this, I am not entirely sure about it, although it maintains that it showed a selection of contrasting views. Presumably this woman has had her five minutes of fame and we can all expunge from our memories her ill-informed views and opinions and hopefully move on to more enlightened times in our country, but with the present set-up of the Home Office under Priti Patel, I am not entirely sanguine.

Judith A Daniels
Norfolk

Fealty rewards highly

It is quite clear that Priti Patel was promoted to her current post of home secretary in return for her loyalty to Boris Johnson, oh, and her staunch Vote Leave views.

Many politicians with as chequered a past as Patel’s would have been shown the rear door at No 10 by now – from her being sacked after holding unofficial meetings with Israeli officials to her recent spat with her permanent secretary, Sir Philip Rutnam.

Finally, her laughable radio interview with Nick Ferrari where she admitted that not even her parents would have been allowed into the UK under her proposed ill-thought out immigration rules. If these rules come into force, could this be another “Windrush” immigration mess, which sees Patel send her parents back to Uganda?

Christopher Learmont-Hughes
Wirral, Merseyside

We should be scared of white men

The chief executive of Ryanair, Michael O’Leary, insists “males of a Muslim persuasion” should be profiled at airports to prevent terrorism “because that’s where the threat is coming from”.

The interview with O’Leary appeared in print barely two days after the white German Christian Nazi Tobias Rathjen murdered 11 people in Hanau in an act of terror driven by anti-Muslim hatred.

Hanau is not an isolated event.

Far-right terror is on the increase across the world.

It now accounts for most terror-related deaths in the US.

It is revolting that even after the atrocities at Hanau and Pittsburgh and El Paso and Charlottesville – all committed by white racists – the likes of O’Leary still want to smear all Muslims as potential terrorists.

Sasha Simic
London

Time to stand aside

It was with incredulity I read this week that Jeremy Corbyn would be willing to accept a main shadow job under the new Labour leader.

Having lost two elections – the second being a crushing defeat – the electorate have confirmed their rejection to his ideologies and policies. He ought to do the honourable thing and immediately resign.

He has been given the opportunity and utterly failed. His ideology is out of date. He should stand aside and make way for others.

Martin Fleck
Maidstone, Kent

Suicide is an epidemic

It is a tragedy when anyone is driven to suicide.

Caroline Flack took her own life a week ago. Since then approximately 136 other people, roughly 19 people per day, will have taken that same terrible course of action in the UK.

That the media ignore the doctors, factory workers, accountants, delivery drivers, builders and teachers, but concentrate on celebrities, says a lot for our society.

Nick Donnelly
Dorset

Blair should reassess his political identity

Steve Bordwell writes in his letter about urging the rehabilitation of Tony Blair.

Like a mummy in a Hammer horror film, Blair has reanimated again, declaring that “all contenders are an improvement on Corbyn”. He’s doing his utmost to push Labour to the centre (or centre right if you’re older than the millennial generation), suggesting a “progressive coalition” with liberal parties, and perhaps a merger with the Lib Dems.

Blair conveniently ignores the fact that the political centre didn’t exactly cover itself in glory at the last election, and that, Brexit aside, attacks on politicians rather than policies led to Labour’s defeat. He himself played a significant role in those attacks.

I’d suggest that if Blair is so enamoured of the Lib Dems he should try to join them, but I don’t think they’d be very keen on all his baggage.

Paul Halas
Stroud, Gloucestershire

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