The Tories are hoping that their delusions will come true

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The ‘no answer answers’ routine is endemic in the Tory party (PA)

When we come to consider which party to vote for, think not only of how feasible their manifestos are but, as importantly, the character and ethos of the party.

Like his party, Oliver Dowden was clueless when answering any questions at PMQ’s recently. Instead, he tried to dominate and belittle Labour’s questioners. Likewise, this continued with BBC’s Question Time where MP Jonny Mercer dismissed out of hand, the logical tried and tested assessments of the other panellists’ opinions.

The “no answer answers” routine is endemic in the Tory party. Perhaps they are under the delusion that if you spout the same rhetoric ad nauseam people will start to believe it’s true. In the interview on Laura Kuenssberg’s Sunday programme Rishi Sunak only answered his own questions and continually referred to his five mission statements.

And why do MPs answer most questions by announcing that the government has given millions of pounds to solve the problem? If money alone could solve the problems of the world or Britain, we would already be living in paradise.

The Tories have spent 13 years getting us into the awful mess we’re in, and it will take a darn sight longer to rectify. The sooner they’re out of office the better for the country.

Keith Poole

Basingstoke

Why would the King care?

I imagine that His Majesty the King was heartbroken at the news that Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater had refused to attend the service of thanksgiving in his honour at Holyrood – if anyone bothered to tell him something of such banal insignificance.

There is something surreal about Slater calling the monarchy “undemocratic”. She has a well-remunerated seat at Holyrood on the basis of a handful of votes, having defeated no one in an election, other than members of her own party who contested a list place.

Beyond that, she is an even better-remunerated government minister as a result of a shabby deal between the Greens and the SNP, which has brought to prominence some of the loopier policies that are now stymied or failing: gender recognition reform, deposit return scheme, highly protected marine areas. Holyrood has fiddled around with these issues while the ones that actually exercise voters – NHS, ferries, education, dangerous roads – are all neglected.

There is a word for someone who complains about a lack of “democracy” in others while epitomising it in her own position: hypocrite.

Jill Stephenson

Edinburgh

No decent human has these values

Last April, immigration minister Robert Jenrick told think tank Policy Exchange that asylum seekers crossing the Channel in small boats held “different lifestyles and values” which threatened to “undermine the cultural cohesiveness” of the UK.

That begged the question as to what, exactly, are Jenrick’s "values” and "culture"? 

Jenrick has just given us a glimpse of his "values" by ordering that murals of cartoon characters – including Mickey Mouse, Winnie the Pooh and Baloo the Bear – which had been on the walls of an asylum seeker reception centre in Kent, be painted over because he believed they were too "welcoming" to the children using the centre.

Jenrick’s deliberate cruelty and hostility towards traumatised children – some as young as nine – fleeing war, oppression and climate change, is stomach-turning.

No decent human being can claim to have these same values.

Sasha Simic

London

To value teachers, the maths is easy

Keir Starmer wants to recruit thousands of new teachers when Labour makes it into government. But he seems very reluctant to indicate whether increased levels of remuneration will form part of the recruitment package. Without them, he’s doomed to fail.

We grossly undervalue our teachers and their contribution to the nation’s wealth, and because of this, we take for granted the value of education. We can do some “back of the envelope” arithmetic to illustrate this: assume a teacher has the equivalent of one class of 30 pupils per year and teaches for 35 years and that those pupils go on to earn the average wage over a working life of 40 years and assume also that the teacher is paid a career-average salary of £40k over her 35 years. The total remuneration represents only 0.1 per cent of the cumulative wealth eventually generated by the teacher’s former pupils.

This is far too simple an analysis. But it goes some way to illustrate how much we derive from education and how little we’re prepared to pay to those who deliver it on our behalf.

Ian Reid

Kilnwick