Back to 1976?
Sir: Your leading article perfectly reflects the public’s attitude to the manifestos of the major parties (‘Challenging democracy’, 29 June). No one has a plan that can remotely be seen as likely to work. Each party promises goodies they have no idea how to pay for; the only question is who will bankrupt us first. As ever, it is easy to distribute largesse, but no one has a clue how to remove it. We are heading towards a rerun of 1976 when the Labour government had to go cap in hand to the IMF. Those old enough can remember inflation of 25 per cent and a Bank base rate of 17 per cent. If you think rates now are excessive, just wait.
George Kelly
Buckingham
Small parties
Sir: Everyone seems to agree that our first-past-the-post voting system is ‘unfair’ (‘Downfall’, 29 June), but what is the answer? All systems of proportional representation are designed by politicians to gerrymander elections in their favour, and this usually backfires. Tony Blair’s devolution ‘reforms’ spring to mind. The German system was designed to make sure the electorate did not get what it wanted in case it wanted the same as last time.
In a parliamentary democracy like ours, the purpose of an election is to deliver a government capable of implementing a coherent programme of policies that reflect the values and interests of the electorate and for which it is held accountable. Coalition governments formed by divvying up the goodies in backroom deals do not do this. The value of small parties lies in their power to say things larger parties would prefer were not said and, by eating into their share of the vote, forcing them to align more with public opinion. The old Liberal party achieved more out of office than the Liberal Democrats ever did in coalition.
The desire of the party bureaucracies to accrue all power to themselves has sucked the life out of them. The next leader of the Conservative party should start the climb back by rebuilding the grass-roots party.
A.W. Harvey
Hawling, Glos
Blue funk
Sir: Lionel Shriver urges voters not to vote Reform, because this would give Labour an even larger majority (‘Voters want to punish the Tories – and themselves’, 22 June). But many disaffected Tories might consider voting Reform for strategic rather than punitive reasons. No vote of mine can prevent a Labour landslide. I live in a Red Wall constituency so red that even in 2019 it remained so. My strategic vote will be a tiny contribution towards the demise of the Conservative party in its present state. I am looking ahead to the construction of a party one might vote for, perhaps including large portions of Reform, many current centre-right conservatives, and none of the ‘CINO’ conservatives whom Lionel Shriver identifies. Yes, I dread a Labour super-majority, but this election is a lost cause. I am thinking ahead to 2029.
Professor Peter Rowley-Conwy
Durham
No hurdles for Farage
Sir: Charles Moore should have no concern about the ‘conundrum’ he presents in the hurdles to Nigel Farage becoming leader of the Conservative party (Notes, 29 June). The poorly drafted section of the party’s constitution entitled ‘Leadership’ does not actually state ‘the leader must be a Conservative MP’, but simply that the leader must be ‘drawn from those elected to the House of Commons’, apparently therefore not precluding a Reform MP (or, indeed, any other). The rules do indeed state that members must have been so for three months before they can vote in party elections, but this would only deprive Mr Farage of the pleasure of voting for himself. Regardless, these apparent hurdles are subject to para. 17, which gives the board ‘power to do anything which in its opinion relates to the management and administration of the party’. Constitutionally, the board of the Conservative party is omnipotent, and since the ‘power to do anything’ includes amending leadership eligibility criteria, there are no hurdles and no conundrum.
Dr Adrian Hilton
University of Buckingham
Roots of anti-Semitism
Sir: Christian Akers’s review entitled ‘The roots of anti-Semitism in Europe’ (Books, 22 June) unfortunately adds to the trope and stereotype of ‘bloodthirsty’ Jews, by failing to add historical background and theological nuance to the period being discussed. Jews did not ‘ritually murder their own children’, which would be against Jewish law, but when threatened by death at the hands of the mob, chose to commit mass suicide, which may have included killing their own children. It was never ritualised, and the events of York in 1190 amplify this point. Those who chose to surrender to the mob and offer to be baptised were slaughtered.
In the wake of the main First Crusade, especially in areas of the Rhine, the Christian world embarked on a torrent of irrationality in which Jews were accused of blood libels, ritual murder and host desecration. If an exceptional Jew rose to dizzy heights, he was still prone to suffer at the whim of the rulers, whether secular or sectarian. Jews as a community could never assert themselves in a swamp of hatred. Identified by the Jew Badge, the infidel ‘blind’ Jews could rarely build ‘Synagogues… higher than churches’, (as Akers writes) and only rarely did the light of Jewish reality penetrate Christian darkness. ‘People hate what they do not understand’ – Rabbi Moses Ibn Ezra (1060-1138).
Charles Landau
London
Clocking cuckoos
Sir: Like Charles Moore, I listen out for the cuckoo each spring (Notes, 29 June) and this year I shared his fear that I would not hear one. Then on 25 June, while anchored in my boat on the Swale in Kent, I heard one from the orchards of Faversham and then a reply from the woodland of the Isle of Sheppey. I think he is correct in saying that the dreadful spring weather may have had an impact, because this is late in the year to hear them, I believe.
Dick Durham
Leigh-on-Sea, Essex
Hello in Kogi
Sir: I was heartened to read that Sean Thomas was unsuccessful in his attempt to locate a Kogi settlement in Colombia (‘Magic mountain’, 29 June). His account of an encounter with a taciturn member of the tribe in a small town was telling. I remember years ago watching a marvellous documentary about the Kogi. A very revealing detail was the fact that their apparently friendly greeting to any outsider translated as ‘When are you leaving?’.
Guy Bargery
Myddfai, Carmarthenshire
Pitt falls
Sir: Richard Symington errs in stating that the Younger Pitt died of liver disease (Letters, 22 June). The surviving medical records point strongly to gastric or duodenal ulceration, which can now be cured in a few days by antibiotic and acid-reducing drugs.
Alistair Lexden
London SW1
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