Martin Kettle helpfully explores the challenges facing Rishi Sunak’s new “Johnsonism without Johnson” administration (Sunak’s job now is not about securing a Tory win but merely avoiding an electoral disaster, 26 October). The old crowd-pleasing bluster and boosterism no longer work when appalling policy “mistakes” cannot be disguised, and demand painful correction.
Yet the Tories’ entrenched Brexit populism still requires promises of levelling up and “compassionate” government spending to avert too much economic misery. Coupled with nationalistic rhetoric and anti-immigration initiatives, these are surviving hallmarks of Boris Johnson’s time, and pose predictable problems for the Labour party, despite its emerging alternative economic programme and favourable poll ratings.
During his first PMQs, Sunak accused Keir Starmer of supporting “unlimited immigration”. Past experience confirms that dog-whistle attacks and other forms of culture-war populism will almost certainly intensify as the next general election approaches. A Labour response that tries to match Tory flag-waving or accept anti-migrant attitudes will only reinforce nationalistic assumptions associated with the Tories.
The majority of voters share more tolerant views, and Labour should campaign for reversing cuts to overseas aid, introducing legal routes for asylum seekers, and restoring trade relations with the EU.
John Chowcat
Bridge, Kent
• Rishi Sunak and his supporters talk loftily about integrity and compassion being his guiding lights. But his cabinet appointments couldn’t show more clearly that the Conservative party’s brightest guiding light remains the Conservative party.
A compromised home secretary is not there for her integrity or compassion, but to appease the party’s far right; a mediocre foreign secretary is not there for his expertise, but for the benefit of the Boris Johnson fan club.
From the idiocy of Brexit and the Rwandan policy to catastrophic, ideological economic showboating, most of the party’s major actions for the past seven years have been motivated by self-preservation, careerism and minority ideology. Integrity and compassion? As if.
Simon Carbery
Tetbury, Gloucestershire
• David Lidington’s statement that “every [Tory MP] went into politics … to make life better for our fellow citizens” is a preposterous assertion unsupported by evidence (Fellow Tories, we look incompetent and self-obsessed. As you vote for our leader, put the country first, 23 October). Does he seriously think that the likes of Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg are motivated by anything beyond self-interest and the acquisition of power and money? I am unable to name a single aspect of my life that 12 years of Tory rule has made better. At least he didn’t spout the other two convenient tropes: that all politicians are as bad as each other and that the only thing worse than the Tories is a Labour government.
Geoff Johnstone
Malvern, Worcestershire
• The problem is not that the Tories look self-obsessed and incompetent, as David Lidington claims, it’s that they are self-obsessed and incompetent. The time to call for the Tory party to “put the country first” is long gone. A hundred years from now, when university students are writing essays on what led to the demise of the UK, whose shoulders do you think the blame will fall on?
Kate Alley
Wimbledon, London
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