Denial has now become the government’s standard response

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

The UK is not united, it’s broken, and worst of all, there is no end in sight (PA)

The current priorities of the UK’s politicians are very worrying and getting more so on an almost daily basis.

People are dying from the cold, hunger and endless waits for medical treatment. At the same time, they are enduring unacceptable living conditions, a rocketing cost of living, and seemingly out-of-control crime rates. The list only grows longer.

The economy has been scuppered, private and company pensions have been seriously devalued, education undermined, public and health services plagued by strikes caused by years of underfunding and undervalued staff. The country’s infrastructure is in terminal decline, all our rivers are polluted, and there is a serious lack of affordable decent housing.

Then, on top of all that, there is climate change. There appears to be no obvious consensus or concerted action on that.

Meanwhile, against this awful backdrop, politicians seem focused on infighting with one another, making new laws while ineffective at using existing ones, and other esoteric relative trivia.

They avoid responsibility for any of the above and instead focus on denying refugees their legal rights, making it more difficult to vote, sowing division and racism, and still trying to convince us that leaving the EU was good for the UK.

Denial has now become the government’s standard response to any critical questioning. And it is a lack of a long-term effective opposition in parliament that has allowed all this to happen. The irritating claim that “we are delivering for the British People” is always on repeat. Yet in reality, that last phrase is meaningless because they can’t tell us what good they’re delivering and for whose benefit they are delivering it for.

Worst of all, there is no end in sight of this tragic predicament. The UK is not united it’s broken. The only offer is more endless austerity, how very worrying is that?

Mike English

Gloucestershire

This government does not have an iota of human decency

To add to Graham Powell’s poignant letter in The Independent recently, regarding immigration, he is being kind to the current government in my view.

Suella Braverman and the government do not have an iota of human decency, preferring instead to target those that cannot defend themselves. Anyone who could consider Rwanda a safe country in which to park her unwanted asylum-seeking refugees must be out of their tiny minds.

Because of the Tories’ gross mismanagement, allied with a cavalier attitude to our hard-earned taxes, millions of pounds have been wasted trying to stop/reduce the number of asylum seekers entering Britain via “illegal” routes.

Like the visiting birds, of which Mr Powell spoke so eloquently, many refugees will eventually return to their country of origin. In the meantime, because unprocessed refugees cannot work and earn money here, Britain will have to provide for them. This seems such a shame, when we so desperately need manpower and the refugees need money, that British industry and agriculture can’t capitalise on this opportunity.

Keith Poole

Basingstoke

Keir Starmer’s usual cautious approach seems to have deserted him

I see that Labour’s Wes Streeting was in bullish form at the weekend. A prominent and relentless critic of Jeremy Corbyn, Streeting is in the view of many Labour voters a pretty brutal and vitriolic individual.

Keir Starmer’s usual cautious approach seems to have deserted him over these personalised ads. He should also consider whether Wes Streeting is really the wisest choice to represent Labour to the voters, a significant proportion of whom have long memories, and better taste, than he may think.

Penny Little

Oxfordshire

Our politicians need to be better people

I remember in 2003 when Akhandadhi Das, while on BBC Radio 4’s Thought of the Day, commented that: “The government should not be solely concerned with the allocation of resources but also with the choices we make, caring for the old, young, poor, sick etc. These are moral judgments and as such politicians need to be less selfish and more caring than the general population. They need to be better people.”

Sir Keir and the Labour Party should reflect on this when producing adverts attacking individual opponents.

Rob Alliott

Cambridge

Why is this form of animal abuse still considered acceptable?

When I read about the police at Aintree I mistakenly thought that they had come to put a stop to the cruelty that is inflicted on these beautiful creatures in the name of sport.

But no, they had come to arrest those who were trying to stop the abuse.

What a crazy world we live in when it is still acceptable to abuse horses and greyhounds in this way.  Surely it is time to put an end to it.

Maggie Dyer

London