Letters | 19 October 2017

The great divider

Sir: Niall Ferguson (‘Tech vs Trump’, 14 October) draws a parallel between the Reformation — powered by the printing press — and today’s social networks — powered by the internet — in their influence on the established hierarchy. Ferguson astutely observes that the consequence of the Reformation was not a hoped-for harmony but ‘polarisation and conflict’. The difference was then, and is now, between collectivism and individualism. Collectivists always saw the internet as a vehicle for the universal consciousness: the blending of minds. Individualists always saw the internet as an integrator: establishing facts using the principle of non-contradiction. The first is mystical. The second is a demonstration of the scientific method at work.
Christine McNulty

Oxhey, Herts

Bring back diplomacy

Sir: Charles Moore is right to remind us of the importance of our overseas missions (The Spectator’s Notes, 14 October), so beautifully recorded in James Stourton’s new book British Embassies. He is also right when he says that in the light of Brexit we urgently need to bolster our diplomatic efforts. For too long we have been doing diplomacy on the cheap. The budget for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office for 2017/18 was £1.3 billion, the cost of building, testing and delivering one Astute Class submarine to the MoD. For those who believe in ‘jaw, jaw’ rather than ‘war, war’, the sooner the FCO budget is revisited the better.
Sir Hugo Swire, MP

(FCO Minister of State 2012-16)

London SW1

Deniers of free speech

Sir: Rod Liddle has the irritating habit of being right far more than he is wrong (‘Blame the grown-ups for the safe-space tribe’, 14 October). The silencing of unpopular voices in colleges is a frightening sign of our fear of ideas.

In 1970 I went to college. I went because I enjoyed study, I wanted the chance of a better job, and I wanted to expand my life experience.