Nesrine Malik’s excellent article (England’s old boys’ club has evolved into ‘the network’, made up of high rollers and City slickers, 30 January) calls to mind the two great architects of Britain’s recent decline, George Osborne and David Cameron – network insiders who exemplify the blurred vision of the public that Nesrine describes. This enabled the “two posh boys who don’t know the price of milk” (Nadine Dorries) to do the financials over public sector cuts without caring about the effects.
Their austerity, and Brexit, decimated services for the poorest and reduced our resilience to cope with the events of the last few years. The current refusal to properly fund health, social care and education by the joyriders who followed them is, as Nesrine says, not because the money isn’t there but because of where it might have to come from.
Gary Woodhouse
Radcliffe-on-Trent, Nottinghamshire
• Nesrine Malik should be exalted for her wonderful sentence on the sleaze at the heart of this government: “Democracy doesn’t ‘die in darkness’, it dies at dinner.”
Roger McGarva
Nottingham
