Is it not curious that Conservative MPs, with their passionate attachment to the present voting system for electing them to Westminster, are not using first past the post to elect their leader? With even more candidates at the Peterborough byelection than are standing for the Conservative leadership, it was apparently acceptable to have an MP elected with less than a third of the votes cast, whereas the Conservative MPs have to produce a final vote of over 50% for the winning candidate. Why are the two elections different?
Michael Meadowcroft
Leeds
• The participants in the drug-fuelled competition in incompetence, mendacity and hypocrisy that passes for the Tory leadership race have been wrestling with the implausible proposition of leaving the EU on 31 October, with or without a deal. By far the most innovative solution is Dominic Raab’s prorogation plan. Assuming Raab’s lack of geographical knowledge extends to history, it is probably fair to conclude that he is unaware that he has succeeded in improving on Hitler’s Enabling Act as a way of bypassing parliament, avoiding the inconvenience of having to incarcerate the opposition. The only hostage required in this case is the Queen.
Vernon Bogdanor comments that, although “relatively straightforward”, this “would appear to be an outrage” (To shut down parliament will be easy. But for three months?, 13 June), but does not mention the Speaker’s determination to stop it. In 1642, the then Speaker defended the rights of parliament against the demands of Charles I. Should Boris Johnson, the notoriously unreliable frontrunner, pick up the Raab plan, it would indeed be a strange irony of history if Bercow were called upon to surpass his 17th-century predecessor by saving both the monarchy and parliament from an authoritarian government.
Dr Anthony Isaacs
London
• Let’s just face it, Boris Johnson only fools those who want to be fooled by his blustering (Was Boris Johnson as successful as London mayor as he claims?, 13 June). We all know he was not responsible for many of the major developments that materialised during his tenure. Lead times are just too long to allow his fabulations to stand. Livingston, like him or not, had a vision and clear policy ideas for our city. He was, along with Labour’s Blair and Tessa Jowell, one of the main politicians responsible for bringing the 2012 Olympics to London and for their success.
Livingston also brought in the Oyster card, initiated the shared bike scheme that Boris then saw in, trialled new buses Boris scrapped and replaced with highly expensive, impractical, but prettily designed neo-Routemasters. Ken wanted a cross-river tram that Boris scrapped. Boris drove through the vanity garden bridge and left Londoners with a huge bill – money and resources that could have been spent on public green spaces in, for example, Haringey, where my local council, with high levels of deprivation, struggles to carry out basic public realm maintenance due to Tory cuts. Who initiated Crossrail? Who was in charge when the major overruns were hidden from the public? It is just so easy to blame the present incumbent but these things do not happen overnight. I don’t even think Boris believes himself. Just see how he has to pay a visit to the barbers every time he tries to pull the wool over our eyes. Only those who want to be fooled by the jester will believe him. The tragedy is that we will all be worse off if too many do so.
Jean-Jacques Best
London
• So 63% of Conservative MPs did not vote for Boris Johnson to become leader – exactly the same percentage of people who did not vote leave in the June 2016 referendum.
Professor Pete Dorey
Department of politics and international relations, School of Law and Politics, Cardiff University
• Before too many Tories get carried away with the idea of Boris Johnson as a superior election-winner, they ought to look at the results he achieved in the two elections in which he was returned as the MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip. In 2015 he had a majority of 10,695, but by 2017 this had fallen to 5,034, a swing of 6.5% against his party.
David Brough
London
• I keep hearing Boris Johnson described by the BBC as the “former foreign secretary”. Wouldn’t it be more balanced, and honest, to call him the “sacked foreign secretary”?
Mary Brown
Stroud, Gloucestershire
• Polly Toynbee’s hatchet job on Johnson and the 100-plus Tory MPs, the real “ones to blame, crowding in to join his bandwagon”, did not actually go far enough (Boris Johnson spoke: you can’t trust a word, 13 June). Most of the Johnson-supporting MPs will indeed be hoping for one of the “120 plum posts”, thinking also that with him as prime minister out-Faraging Farage, their seats can be saved from Labour in the next election, but what Toynbee doesn’t mention is how short-lived Johnson’s popularity will be.
Being prone to the odd gaffe and having a reputation for being something of a rogue will only be popular in the short-run; even before his arrival in Downing St, inevitably there will be exposures, a mixture of revelations of infidelities, tax irregularities, gross exaggeration of past achievements, and bare-faced lies. By the time of the general election, Johnson’s inability to grasp detail will be obvious to all, and Tory MPs will have huge difficulty in explaining their choice of such an inept leader to an embarrassed electorate. Even Corbyn’s team should realise what damage six questions demanding detailed answers on a variety of subjects will do at PMQs.
Let’s not make the Tory mistake of treating the voters as mugs; Johnson is no “one nation” Conservative, and will take his party down with him.
Bernie Evans
Liverpool
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