Letters: the Tories’ fatal flaw

Major error

Sir: Even as a former Tory voter, I acknowledge that the predicted scale of the Conservative electoral defeat would be a national tragedy. Starmer’s government needs to be kept in check by a robust opposition. There are many explanations for the Tory decline, but George Osborne’s Diary (15 June) gives some clues: his celebration of a ‘Middle England’ country fête having a tombola for Gaza rather than a worthy local cause, for instance.

More tellingly, Osborne also celebrates John Major’s advice that the Conservatives ‘will never win while we remain in thrall to the hard right of our party’. The practical interpretation of this involves moving the Tories to the left, while leaving voters to choose Labour’s ‘real thing’. Understanding Major’s definition of the Tory ‘hard right’ is also crucial, as they are most likely to have been Eurosceptic Tory MPs. Dismissing this group and their views on general policy is the Tories’ fatal flaw, demonstrated by the 2016 referendum result, the 2019 ‘Get Brexit done’ general election and the likely Tory defeat in 2024: all electoral outcomes that satisfy Major’s so-called ‘hard right’.

Charles Jenkins

High Wycombe, Bucks

Misremembered

Sir: In his Diary, George Osborne states: ‘I was the first Conservative to visit the opposition offices in the Commons after almost two decades in government.’ This is not true. John Major, as leader of the opposition for six weeks following the 1997 election, occupied the small office on the ground floor of the leader of the opposition’s suite of offices that had been used by Tony Blair. Michael Heseltine took possession of the enormous office previously used by John Prescott.