Making it work
Sir: Your leading article (24 April) tells us that: ‘A hung parliament would be a disaster. Coalitions do not work in Westminster’s adversarial system.’ Can’t you see that the adversarial system, with its focus on doing down the opposition rather than on working collegially to decide what might be best for the nation, is exactly what we are sick of? If our voting preferences result in a coalition then we’ll expect our elected representatives to damn well make it work. If they let it become a disaster we may choose not to vote for any of them ever again.
Derek Rowntree
Banbury
Dividing lines
Sir: James Forsyth’s observation (Politics, 24 April) that there may be only a fortnight (now a week) to save the Conservative party makes one wonder why David Cameron has not made use of the material in Brendan O’Neill’s article ‘Fifty Commandments of New Labour’ (24 April). A soundbite on the 4,300 new criminal offences and a commitment to cease and reverse legislation would certainly win over a percentage of the new young voters apparently being mobilised by the reality TV effect of the prime ministerial broadcasts. This is a serious dividing line between the parties, and I would not trust the Lib Dems with it. Is there not some new media way of getting this point across to that constituency?
Mark Moody-Stuart
London E1
Sir: It’s own-goal time. I am not embedded with any party, but your anti-Clegg smears last week, courtesy of Messrs Forsyth and Howker, are unpleasant and likely to backfire just as the Tories’ home-grown efforts have. As for policies, the schools reform agenda of the estimable Michael Gove is not just the Tories’ ‘best single policy’, it is almost their only clearly stated policy, as opposed to woolly ‘Big Society’ waffle. As for James Forsyth’s claim that if the Clegg bubble fails to burst, ‘it could be the end of the Tory party as we know it’ — this is just an open invitation to those wanting a government that will bash the bankers rather than the BBC to take the appropriate action.
Mike Venis
Faversham, Kent
Sir: As a ‘targeted Tory’ voter in the East Oxford constituency, I have received three personally addressed letters from the Lib Dems. I had begun to wonder how the Lib Dem propaganda in East Oxford had been financed. I had not realised that this effort was being paid for, either directly or indirectly, out of public funds (‘Squeaky clean? Nick Clegg is sleazier than you think’, 24 April).
Give me Lord Ashcroft any day.
Charles O.M. Judd
Oxford
Brown’s error
Sir: Toby Young may like the soundbite that comes from hindsight but shows little understanding of political reality when he writes, ‘It is now generally accepted that David Cameron made a colossal blunder in agreeing to the televised debates’ (Status anxiety, 24 April). Did he really expect David Cameron to refuse to participate when both other parties had agreed? The error was Gordon Brown’s, because he had the final say on whether to allow the debate.
E. Kraft
Colchester, Essex
English laws
Sir: Gordon Brown has avowed that he is committed to major constitutional change in parliament, yet why, in 13 years of a Labour government and, given his one-time commitment to ‘English votes for English laws’, has he doggedly refused to enact any proper devolutionary settlement for England? One suspects that, despite his high principles, a proper constitutional settlement for England would suit neither the Labour party nor Mr Brown personally.
Professor Jeremy Dibble
Durham University
Horror of war
Sir: The review of Alistair Urquhart’s autobiography (Books, 10 April) reminds me that in the late summer of 1945 I was in a naval hospital situated in Herne Bay, South Australia, with British servicemen just released from Japanese camps, and witnessed from their appearance and attitude how they must have suffered. Some never recovered. A few months later I walked around Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Tokyo and witnessed the devastation, but could only imagine the suffering.
We are all touched by the suffering of war, even the lucky ones like me.
Godfrey Dodds
Croydon
Loads of room
Sir: How disappointing to see Rory Sutherland repeating the tired old falsehood that we live on ‘an overpopulated little island’ (Wiki Man, 24 April). The UK is not overpopulated: it is 51st on the world population density list, well behind Malta, and less than half as crowded as Mauritius and Taiwan. And Great Britain is not a little island, but the eighth biggest on earth.
Ken Bishop
Liverpool
Rory Sutherland replies:
If you count the Vatican City and Monaco as countries — and include the wilderness of the Scottish Highlands in the UK figure — your figure is correct. But among large countries, England’s population density is surpassed only by the Netherlands, South Korea, Belgium, Taiwan, Bangladesh and Singapore.
To wit
Sir: I found the cartoon on page 22 of your 3 April issue (captioned ‘Nice tits’) to be sexist, politically incorrect and highly offensive. Please renew my subscription.
Peter B. Archie
By email
Comments