Britain should come first
Sir: Reading Clemency Burton-Hill’s ‘Cameron is taking on Brown — in Rwanda’ (5 May) I felt my blood boil. I have every sympathy with the people of Rwanda but surely Conservative MPs’ time would be much better spent grappling with the issues facing ordinary people in Britain?
As Andrew Mitchell, Hugo Swire and David Mundell have some time on their hands this summer, perhaps they would like to help out at my daughter’s ‘bog-standard’ comprehensive where, while she works hard to achieve her ambition of studying Law, other pupils smoke cannabis in the toilets and routinely disrupt classes. Or perhaps they would prefer to clean up the broken glass and graffiti left by the (not very) huggable hoodies in the children’s playground? Or they could give the benefit of their business skills to local hauliers struggling to survive against low-wage-migrant-employing competitors?
Election turnouts have fallen because ordinary people believe politicians of all hues have no interest in what life is actually like beyond Islington and Notting Hill. The concerns of the lower-middle and skilled working classes are treated with disdain by all the major parties and disaffection seethes under the surface here. I have spoken to many people who are tempted to vote BNP, despite their revulsion towards racism, because it’s the only party which appears to be listening to them.
This may come as a shock to David Cameron, but neither Africa, nor climate change, will influence the vote of anybody around here, or in Manchester, Liverpool or Rochdale for that matter.
Sue Ward
Derbyshire
Power to the EU
Sir: John Laughland’s pro-Europeans justify the European Union’s existence because it has created peace in Europe. But pro-Europeans cannot, any longer, use the ‘peace argument’ to support their case, for peace has now — we hope — been permanently achieved in Europe. Instead, the European Union must serve a new function and, potentially, one even more important than it did in the past.
We live in a world undergoing severe shifts in power. New giants such as China and India are emerging fast in Asia, and dormant powers like Iran and Russia are re-asserting themselves again. It is hard to believe that this will not transfer into politico-military strength. America’s power will be pulled everywhere and, it is likely, away from Europe.
In the changing world, the European Union becomes the vehicle with which we can retain our influence and trading power well into the coming century. Europe’s task was at first to prevent its member states from going to war with one another; now its mission is to protect them from external aggression and to project their power abroad. The European Union must now become a global power, and Britain — as Europe’s pre-eminent military power — is best placed to carry forward the project, and for its own national interest.
James Rogers
Director of Operations, The Henry Jackson Society, Cambridge
Wait in line
Sir: Average waiting times for an operation are not two weeks longer now than they were under Mrs Thatcher as Fraser Nelson stated (‘These elections will mark the final collapse of New Labour’, 28 April). They are, in fact, around 16 weeks shorter. Average in-patient waiting times were 23.7 weeks in 1987, the first year for which figures were collected in the same way as today. This has now fallen to seven weeks. So, far from confirming that the NHS is getting worse as The Spectator claimed, the figures highlight the remarkable progress of the past ten years.
Andy Burnham
Health Minister for Delivery and Reform, Department of Health, London SW1
Capital offense
Sir: Rod Liddle (‘Scottish Nationalism is compelling’, 5 May) suffers from a Londoners’ depressing delusion that West Country dwellers should demonstrate servi-lity towards those joining the weekend and summer-long invasion of the west by swarms of refugees from our capital. They clog our roads and upon arrival moan about how hard their voluntarily chosen mode of life is. They roll up to their occasionally occupied second homes well provided from their hometown Waitrose: their cash outlay on our patch is often modest indeed.
I visit London every week expending vast sums in its over-priced hotels and restaurants, but I accept it as something I choose to do: I do not expect forelock tugging or curtseying staff at every place I visit.
Rod didn’t even get the Cornish term for invaders right. They are called Grockles in Devon; in Cornwall they are identified as Emmets. Recently it was decided, in the interests of efficiency and common approach, to merge the two names and term them haemorrhoids. After all, they are a pain in the arse and hang around in bunches.
Robert Lefroy
Somerset
In the know
Sir: Andrew Taylor (Books, 5 May) writes in his review that Martin Sixsmith was right to suggest that Litvinenko’s murder was not something that Putin directly ordered. Can you imagine that when the American troops were entering Iraq, President Bush did not know anything about it?
Oleg Gordievsky
London WC1
Right time, right place
Sir: Paul Johnson’s reflections on space, time and God (And Another Thing, 28 April) are nicely summed up in the saying ‘Time and space are God’s way of stopping everything from happening all at once and all in the same place’. I don’t know who is the author of this gem; to me it sounds a bit like Ronald Knox.
John Bunting
Godalming, Surrey
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