Vote of no confidence
Sir: Rod Liddle is too harsh on those calling for another general election (‘I hope you didn’t sign that petition’, 30 November). You do not have to be a Trumpian denialist to believe the result in July raised serious concerns. Labour received just 33.7 per cent of the votes cast, yet won 411 of the 650 seats in the Commons. Labour’s total votes amounted to 23,622 per MP elected. The figure for Reform UK was 823,522. First past the post in individual constituencies works well with two major parties. But when support is significantly more divided, it is not fit for purpose. The petition was surely born out of signatories’ frustration that their votes were not fairly reflected in the new membership of the legislature.
Francis Bown
London E3
Unfinished business
Sir: In your leading article ‘Labour’s little helper’ (30 November), you lambast the CBI, accusing us of being ‘corporate bureaucrats’ and ‘failing to stand up for the real wealth creators in society’. If by this you mean smaller businesses, the majority of our direct and indirect members are small- or medium-sized companies. It is also true that most of the CBI’s income comes from companies that employ more than 50 people – that’s the companies which together account for 66 per cent of business turnover, 53 per cent of private sector employment and the majority of business investment. So I hope that you would agree that these count as wealth creators.
Your central charge seems to be that we betray business if we engage constructively with government, rather than standing on the sidelines chucking rocks. We engage with governments because our job is to argue the case for growth and wealth creation in a way that gets results. It might be tempting to lead our members into the Valley of Death and charge the cannons of a 150-seat majority, but in the words of General Bosquet at Balaclava: ‘C’est magnifique, mais c’est pas la guerre.’
Each year, a sitting government will pass between 25 and 50 Acts of Parliament and issue around 3,500 statutory instruments. Lurking in the details are legions of devils, and we see it as our job to root them out. Sitting down with ministers and civil servants is less heroic than shouting through megaphones for lower taxes, deregulation and an end to planning. But more likely to achieve the outcomes that businesses and, dare I say, the country need.
Rupert Soames
Chair, Confederation of British Industry
Radio active
Sir: In an attempt to formulate an argument as to why launching Radio 3 Unwind is not to be welcomed, David Sexton ties himself in knots (Arts, 30 November).
He describes a nonexistent ‘pressure’ on Radio 3 to play music of a particular mood or style. On the contrary: the variety is as broad as it ever was. We recently announced a 40-part series entitled The Modernists, exploring composers ranging from Boulez to Berio to Stockhausen. We arranged a day of broadcasts across the UK to mark the start of Advent, with programmes from the Scottish Highlands, St Michael’s Mount in Cornwall and Seamus Heaney’s birthplace in Northern Ireland. And in January we will be in Auschwitz, reflecting on the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camp. None of this is the mark of a radio station seeking to embrace a ‘ghastly descent into populism’.
There is a strange habit within a small section of the arts world of seeking to pour scorn on anything that might introduce classical music to others. The launch of Radio 3 Unwind means there is now an even greater amount of classical music on offer from the BBC – at a time when figures show more hours are being spent listening to the main Radio 3 station than ever before. I’d say that’s something to celebrate.
Sam Jackson
Controller, BBC Radio 3 and BBC Proms
Free choice
Sir: Adrian Pascu-Tulbure empathically attributes Calin Georgescu’s victory in the first round of Romania’s presidential elections to hardship-stricken ‘elderly pensioners’ (‘Romania’s disruptor’, 30 November). In reality only 8 per cent of those aged 65 or over voted for him. More of his votes – around 31 per cent – came from under-24s. In many cases, the very ‘Eurocrats’ you condemn – such as rich footballers and businessmen – aligned themselves with him.
Why wouldn’t the suffering elderly (in one of the most unequal societies in the EU) cast their ballot for a patriot? Because, having suffered during the communist Ceausescu regime, they do not want to go back. Georgescu refuses to take questions from journalists. He insists he represents a ‘divine intervention’ on Earth. He advocates ‘neutrality’, which in reality would aid Russia’s influence. He also claims Covid does not exist, Pepsi contains nanochips and C-sections ‘disrupt the divine thread’.
A famous slogan from the 1989 revolution was ‘Our children will be free.’ We want to remain free.
Alexandra Luca
London
Mine alone
Sir: The morning after their wedding in the summer of 1952, Clarissa Churchill and her husband Anthony Eden flew to Portugal to honeymoon in the small town of Urgeiriça, south-east of Porto (Books, 23 November). The town was well known for its radium and uranium mine, which had been worked since 1913. Radium made paint glow in the dark after exposure to light, and this luminous paint was vital for aeroplane instruments during the second world war.
In the 1930s, the ex-British army officer Charles Harbord had converted a building which had housed British mining engineers into a luxury hotel. In 1949 the British government signed an agreement with the Portuguese state for the exploitation of the mine, and during his honeymoon Eden negotiated with Salazar over an extension to this mining concession. History doesn’t relate for how long the new Mrs Eden was left on her own during the honeymoon.
Richard Symington
London SW17
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