Mohammed Hijab

Bad friend Sir: Tim Shipman’s examination of Reform’s success in attracting female voters contains an important warning for Nigel Farage (‘March of the mums’, 9 August). He cites Luke Tryl of More in Common, who points out that Farage’s main Achilles’ heel when it comes to support among women is his closeness to Donald Trump. The US President has undermined Nato and western security, fawned over our enemy Vladimir Putin, damaged the world economy with his tariffs and promoted dangerous conspiracy theories, not least by appointing a vaccine-denying health secretary. Unless Farage can distance himself decisively from this arrogant and ignorant narcissist, it is not only women who will turn

One of the occupational hazards of being a journalist is being hounded by litigants. Indeed, one of the reasons why much of the media finds it easier to report fluff than to write about difficult issues is that the latter can be costly in terms of money, as well as time. Three years ago I wrote a column in this magazine about some of the downsides of diversity. At the time there had just been serious disturbances in Leicester between local Hindus and Muslims. One of the people who decided to throw himself into the middle of that trouble and to try to make things worse was an online pugilist