Letters | 11 April 2019 | The Spectator

All Cameron’s fault

Sir: In this time of febrile political speculation, there can have been few more arresting subject headings on your Letters page than ‘Not Cameron’s fault’ (6 April). Your correspondent Mike Jeffes added to the sense of unreality by writing that ‘Cameron did nothing wrong’. You need to be neither a Remainer nor Brexiteer to follow in horror the painful result of Cameron’s opening of this Pandora’s Box in 2016. In the 2010 and 2015 elections, the subject of Europe was well down on the list of voter concerns, but with a mixture of hubris, stupidity, and narrow political interest, Cameron’s decision to call the referendum has driven us into this political quagmire. Even more extraordinary is his claim in January that he has no regrets over calling the referendum. Most people in the UK would beg to differ. Leslie Buchanan Barcelona

Hostility to Ireland?

Sir: Congratulations on your having presided over 500 editions of the Spectator. As a reader of the magazine since the early 1980a, I have seen many fine articles which meet your stated aims to ‘inform, to entertain and to make people think’.

However, I regret to say that when it comes to Ireland, with the occasionally exception, these laudatory objectives are rarely met. I am not unduly thin-skinned but, over the last couple of years, the prevailing tone and tenor of most Spectator articles relating to Ireland have been snide and hostile – Robert Hardman’s polemical piece about Ireland’s observer status at La Francophonic being an egregious example. While 17 EU Member States are either members of observers of this international organisation, only Ireland’s affiliation incurs his scorn.

Brexit has undeniably placed some pressure on British-Irish relations, Nevertheless, most British people I meet understand the rationale underlying the Irish Government approach to Brexit; a policy which enjoys cross-party support in our parliament and across public opinion in Ireland, In a minority of cases, criticism of that approach has lapsed into an anti-Irish sentiment which we all hoped had been consigned to the past.