Politicians need to educate themselves before spouting harmful nonsense about mental health

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I note that Boris Johnson, the eminent psychologist, has pronounced, with his vast knowledge of the subject, that hard work is the best cure for depression. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard Theresa May, Jeremy Hunt, Matt Hancock and many others make inaccurate comments about mental health (usually confusing it with mental Illness). If they did know anything they wouldn’t make the sort of inane statements that Esther McVey, Iain Duncan Smith and other DWP luminaries have made about work.

If you are depressed, it takes all your energy to get up, attend to personal hygiene, eat and stay alive if suicidal thoughts are in your mind. Work is the last activity you want and you wouldn’t be able to concentrate, think coherently or possibly coordinate yourself.

Why don’t you people shut up or at least make the effort to know what you’re talking about?

R Kimble
Leeds

Collapsing morals?

In 1963 John Profumo, our war secretary at the time, resigned for lying about his affair with Christine Keeler. In 2019 Boris Johnson, who has made a career out of peddling distortions, half-truths and downright lies will in all probability become our next prime minister.

How times change.

Jack Liebeskind
Cheltenham

A lesson on Ilhan Omar and irony

Margaret Hodge has finally stood in solidarity with a member of the left who has been wrongly accused of antisemitism. No, not anyone in the Labour Party in the UK, but with a progressive congresswoman of colour subjected to racism by Donald Trump.

Owen Jones has pointed out the left has been demonised by so-called moderates and centrists both in the US and here in the UK. And by doing so they have legitimised far-right attacks on the left and the ugly racism we saw at Trump’s rallies.

Wes Streeting and Jess Phillips have also shown their support for Ilhan Omar. Trump calls Omar antisemitic and accuses her of hating America, and Labour’s “moderates” stand with her and condemn Trump for being a racist – the same “moderates” who accuse Corbyn of being antisemitic and hating Britain.

Trump’s latest attack is sickeningly racist – and it draws strength from dodgy centrist attacks on the left. Omar and the other progressive US politicians deserve our support, however, right-wing MPs also need calling out, because they would not support progressive politicians on the left like Omar, Rashida Tlaib or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez if they were UK MPs. This is hypocrisy at its worst.

Julie Partridge
London

Ahead of our skis

Would it be a good idea to wait until the Equality and Human Rights Commission produces its report on complaints of antisemitism in the Labour Party before reaching conclusions? Having accepted that an investigation is needed, should it not be trusted to do its job? Clearly those who referred complaints to the commission thought it was worthy of the task at the time.

I see the latest from the Met Police is that out of 45 complaints, four former members of the Labour Party may be prosecuted. The Met are taking their time to investigate and I am sure they are being thorough and fair.

How about giving the EHRC some space?

Marjorie Taylor Hutchins
Christchurch

The issue of ‘sending people back’

Being a person of colour, my Canadian passport doesn’t deter people from asking me to go back. My accent over the phone doesn’t help me either to win arguments or to captivate the hearts and minds of many.

Even back home we lived as a minority and we were subjected to the same scrutiny and judgements.

I will never forget when a frustrated passenger wasn’t pleased with my answer as a ticketing agent. She angrily said, “Can I speak to someone from this country?”

President Trump isn’t helping either to bridge the gap between communities and is making the lives of anyone who isn’t white more miserable.

I have a message to those who keep asking us to go back. We live in a global community where one thing affecting one community will have an impact on all – one way or another.

Those immigrants you can’t stand seeing could have been forced to flee as a direct consequences of your government’s meddling in their affairs. You could be the one to blame for having them come to your shores seeking a better life which you had denied them from having.

If we vividly apply this demand of ‘go back to your country’, everyone will be affected including Trump himself. His wife would have to board the boat before everyone else.

Abubakar N Kasim​
Toronto

Skeletons and racism

Trump says he has no racist bones in his body and apparently Corbyn has no antisemitic ones. This is surprising since these bones are part of the anatomical structure of the human body. The point about racism is that we are all inclined towards it, hence the ease with which populist politicians can manipulate an electorate. To elaborate, we obtain relief and escape from hostile internal critics located in our own minds by creating scapegoats. Everything I am reluctant to own as part of myself (infantile dependence, neediness, greediness, foolishness, anger, dishonesty, stubbornness, violence, irresistible sexual desire, lack of mastery over my own emotions…) I am inclined to attribute to others.

Racism is a species of cowardice, a kind of precarious vertigo aspiring to the high ground while simultaneously teetering on the brink of the abyss. Rather than deny its existence, what matters is to recognise and deal with it in ourselves, and above all prevent it from becoming institutionalised in our political systems.

Stephen Wilson
Oxford