Jonathan Freedland does well to rubbish four of the main “spurious arguments” advanced by Tories for Boris Johnson to stay in office, but strangely fails to mention the one that is possibly the most damaging for the Tory party (Johnson to stay because of Ukraine? Nonsense. The war makes it more urgent that he go, 15 April). Many Tory MPs have openly acknowledged that there is no one in the party ready to take Johnson’s place, so the first prime minister ever found to have broken the law in office has to stay. What an admission.
Presumably from this we can assume that no other Tory MP would be able to persuade voters that the party is committed “both to the observance of the law, and also to the rule of law”, in the words of Lord Wolfson? Furthermore, is there nobody with better, more humane ideas for dealing with asylum seekers, or ready to impose fair taxation policies after facing scrutiny of their own tax records? Even more importantly, does no one better than Johnson exist in the party with the necessary empathy to help the millions of people suffering in the cost-of-living crisis?
If Labour can exploit these weaknesses by launching a full attack on the government’s appalling record and debunking the Tory propaganda about how efficiently Covid was dealt with, the May local elections results should at least force the men in grey suits into action.
Bernie Evans
Liverpool
• There is another spurious argument to add to Jonathan Freedland’s analysis. It is the Tory mantra that whatever Boris Johnson’s faults, they should be forgiven because on Covid he “got all the big calls right”. No he did not.
On PPE, stock was allowed to deteriorate and then he introduced a wasteful, inefficient and corrupt system for replacement contracts.
On test and trace, he instituted an expensive privatised tracing system that could have been much better handled by existing local public health authorities.
On lockdowns, he dithered and then was overeager to lift restrictions. On excess deaths, despite the early vaccine rollout (thanks to the NHS), our performance has been worse than comparable countries. All of which suggests that whatever the outcome of the official investigation, it is already clear that on Covid, Johnson did not get all the big calls right.
Dr Colin J Smith
West Kirby, Wirral
• Where is the attorney general, the senior government law officer, in all this? Nowhere to be seen. The person who occupies the role has an overriding obligation to ensure that the rule of law is paramount. No attorney can continue to be part of a government led by ministers found to have flagrantly violated this principle, accompanied by denials and lies – a position clearly understood by Lord Wolfson in his resignation speech as justice minister. Anything less is tantamount to complicity.
Michael Mansfield QC
London
• We’ve received our postal ballots for the May council election and see that the Tory candidates appear as “local Conservatives”. All the literature mentions only local issues. This is the first time in our 50-plus years of voting that the local Tories have tried to separate themselves formally from the national party, so evidently Boris Johnson, partygate and inflation are cutting through as disadvantages. Is this happening elsewhere?
Laurie and Susan Smith
Carshalton, Surrey
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