How do the Tories do it (Theresa May set to be PM after Leadsom quits leadership race, theguardian.com, 11 July)? Bloody mayhem is established and within a matter of days there is a wholesale closing of ranks before the stupid Labour party can take advantage of the fiasco (did they even notice?). And now we have a summer of Tory consolidation (probably back towards “remain”) and Labour mayhem and bloodshed neatly leading up to the conference season. Wow, that is impressive politics!
Gary Bennett
Exeter
• I think Andrea Leadsom has made the right decision. She will be able to spend more time with her children.
Melanie White
Reading, Berkshire
• Home counties commuters’ problems with their privatised rail franchise (Commuters rail at ‘hell’ on Southern, 11 July) would be solved with railway renationalisation: a key policy of Jeremy Corbyn. Although apparently such policies make him unelectable and unable to connect with ordinary voters’ concerns.
Matthew Gee
Nairobi, Kenya
• Kathryn Hughes suggests that George Eliot would not have known the phrase “haves and have-nots” (Review, 9 July). Why not? It is first recorded in about 1739 and was used by E Bulwer-Lytton in his book Athens published in 1837, which she could well have read.
Beverley Charles Rowe (Mr)
Savernake, Wiltshire
• In the 1960s an architect colleague, an émigré from Tito’s Yugoslavia, used to say that he always felt at home in Croydon (National Trust extols beauty and culture of … Croydon, 8 July). It reminded him of Belgrade! (I don’t think that was intended as a compliment.)
David Hutchinson
Lewes, East Sussex
• In the depths of post-Brexit gloom, I read (Report, 9 July) that a two-mile beer pipeline has been constructed in Bruges, and suddenly there is hope for the future. Thank you a thousand times.
Bob Bury
Leeds
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