It may not be fashionable after 14 years of Tory chaos to lament the departure of a Conservative Party politician, but Andy Street losing in the West Midlands is a sad state of affairs. He is a highly competent, decent individual who has bucked the inexplicable preponderance of dreadful politicians across the UK.
We must retain the good ones, and all parties must do better to minimise the extremists, charlatans and incompetents. If the Tories had any grasp of reality, they would quickly find a spot for Street to get him back working for them and the heavily jaded citizens of this country.
Good luck to Richard Parker, who I am sure will do his best to fill some very large shoes in the West Midlands.
Robert Boston
Kent
The real reason the Tories lost
Most people are not interested in Rwanda, HS2, inflation, tax cuts and the like.
What they need is to be able to see a dentist when suffering in agony, and see a doctor when sick.
Fourteen years in office and the Conservatives have failed to address either.
Totally clueless.
Gordon Marler
Address supplied
It isn’t all Rishi’s fault…
It is a little unfair to put too much of the blame for the poor performance of the Conservatives in the local elections on Rishi Sunak.
Boris Johnson’s Partygate and the economic disaster of Liz Truss’s premiership are still in the minds of the electorate.
Anthony Slack
Rochdale
The Tories don’t even believe in themselves
Andy Street is talking as if he’s come from nowhere and nearly won.
Let’s be clear, he was the incumbent and he held all the aces. Even Tory party HQ thought he was a shoo-in.
But he failed, and now he’s an also-ran.
Notably, he didn’t even wear a Conservative rosette on the podium. That matters. It shows he had no faith in his party – no wonder really, given their dire record – and is ashamed of them. No wonder nobody believes in the Conservatives – even their own people don’t.
Dale Hughes
Address supplied
First past the post is damaging our politics
I hold no love for the Conservative Party but the mess that they are in is, in part, the fault of our system of government. They are, of course, largely responsible for that, since they have colluded with Labour for a century in persisting with the undemocratic first-past-the-post system.
One of the effects of that is that one of them usually has a majority of the parliamentary seats but always with a minority of the vote. In the 2019 election, Boris Johnson had less than 44 per cent of the vote but gained 56 per cent of the seats.
Another result of FPTP is that both the largest parties are, in effect, coalitions. Their prime objective is to hold on to power, which means that their extremists have to be placated. Therefore, they do what is best for their party, and what will keep their sponsors on side, rather than doing what is best for the country.
If we were to have a proportional voting system, it’s likely that it would result in coalition. But that would be a coalition chosen by the voters, and would require members of government to cooperate and compromise with each other – to the benefit of us all.
Susan Alexander
South Gloucestershire
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