When I was a child during the second world war, British men and women laid down their lives for us. Would they have thought that nearly 80 years later, their descendants would be asked to lay down their jobs for the country (Businesses going bust is price worth paying for no-deal Brexit, says Hunt, 1 July)? My only hope is that the ragbag advocating this sacrifice will be giving us personal examples of such fortitude.
Isobel Waddington
York
• Can anyone explain just what is so truly awful about the EU that any price is, apparently, worth paying to get out of it? Surely the Tory party is entitled to go mad. It has no right to inflict its lunacy on the rest of us. As parties to this madness, both Johnson and Hunt are evidently unfit to hold the office to which they aspire. Perhaps the best way forward would be for Mrs May to call a general election now.
Roy Boffy
Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands
• Jeremy Hunt says a no-deal Brexit is necessary to maintain the UK’s image abroad as “a country where politicians do what the people tell them to do”. But the people have never requested what he is proposing. Many wanted a strong economy with £350m a week extra spending on the NHS (and with no extra borrowing). What are politicians doing about that?
And that was three long years ago. Why are he and his colleagues now so patently sticking fingers in their ears, seemingly so afraid to ask the people what they want politicians to do now?
Paolo Gordon
Teddington, London
• Jeremy Hunt proposes to create a £6bn fund for the fishing and farming sectors, arguing that “if we [bailed out] the bankers then why wouldn’t we do it … for our fishermen and farmers now”?
I thought one of the reasons for leaving the EU was that it would hugely benefit the fishing and farming industries. Why do they need to be recompensed for a decision that was supposedly taken in their interests?
Matthew Taylor
Hove, East Sussex
• The bailout of the banks was followed by 10 years of austerity, huge damage to the NHS, and a marked increase in inequality. Also, subsidising exporters will certainly spark trade wars. Will somebody now ask Mr Hunt (and Mr Johnson) exactly what material advantage is envisaged as flowing from Brexit, to set against this cost?
Roger Wilson
Billingshurst, West Sussex
• Polly Toynbee is painfully right (Hunt seemed the sensible option. No longer, 2 July). This increasingly phoney contest has come down to a choice between Sir Toby Belch Johnson and Sir Andrew Aguecheek Hunt. At least Shakespeare knew that the right place for these buffoons was in a comic subplot. We should be so lucky.
Tim Brassell
Thame, Oxfordshire
• Thanks to Polly Toynbee for reminding us of Jeremy Hunt’s track record (and there wasn’t even space to mention his association with the notorious book advocating privatisation of the health service). The most sinister thing about his campaign is that many journalists describe him as “boring”. It reminds me of the line from Baudelaire: “The finest trick of the devil is to persuade you that he does not exist.”
Ray Jenkin
Cardiff
• You report Philip Hammond’s fear that the Conservative leadership contest “risks undermining his party’s reputation for economic competence” (Bidding war on spending hurts party reputation, chancellor warns rivals, 2 July). One wonders, after nine years of largely ideological austerity, a bucketload of expensive and failing privatisations, to say nothing of the £1bn bribe to the DUP or the vast sums they appear willing to commit to a no-deal Brexit, just what is – or should be – left of any such reputation?
Rev John James
Watchfield, Somerset
• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com
• Read more Guardian letters – click here to visit gu.com/letters
• Do you have a photo you’d like to share with Guardian readers? Click here to upload it and we’ll publish the best submissions in the letters spread of our print edition
