Andy Beckett’s analysis of the government is spot-on (The reason for these cynical power grabs: the weaker the Tories become, the stronger they need to appear, 24 November). This is not the Conservative and Unionist party that I have known (and hated) all my life. It is the Brexit or Reform party wearing different clothes. The fact that Rishi Sunak hinted last month that Nigel Farage could be welcomed back into the party shows how far to the right it has moved.
This government has less in common with traditional European Conservative parties such as the Christian Democrats in Germany than with the neofascist governments of Italy and Hungary or the National Rally party in France. Only a few rightward steps down the road would lead me to compare it to Vladimir Putin’s Russia. And that is how the world outside is beginning to see us.
We have a government that is happy to promote the freedom of large companies to do as they like, while restricting the rest of us from criticising what it is doing. The sooner we get rid of it the better.
Dave Pollard
Leicester
• Andy Beckett skilfully shows the perverse ratio of authoritarianism to incompetence operating among the Tories. It is true that the current government “seeks to crush or ignore opposition in ways that previous, much more popular administrations such as Margaret Thatcher’s or Tony Blair’s rarely dared”. However, this rather underplays the authoritarian tendencies and implacable will that was a significant feature of Thatcher’s terms in office. This matters because the despotism of the current administration owes as much to their pedigree as it does to the extreme-right sweep of international factors.
Ironically, for an opponent of big government, Thatcher was an early contributor to the “highly centralised political system” that Beckett identifies, having abolished the metropolitan councils and the Greater London council in an act designed to neutralise opposition, but carried out under the guise of administrative streamlining. She did her utmost to neutralise unions by effectively proscribing industrial action via legislation, including an outright ban on unionism at GCHQ; and it has long been argued that she deployed the police politically against striking miners.
Her broadcast ban on direct statements by Irish republican political representatives attracted the charge of denying basic human rights, while section 28 of her Local Government Act outlawed the “promotion” of homosexual relationships, in an act of scarcely veiled homophobia. She may not have been as clumsy and vicious as her successors, but her authoritarian tendencies were evident and inarguable. It may have bought her votes, but it left a poisonous legacy in the bloodstream of her party.
Paul McGilchrist
Cromer, Norfolk
• Andy Beckett notes that “We have an electoral system that traditionally turns vote shares well below 50% into dominant parliamentary majorities.” He also suggests that Conservatism had “relatively broad support” under Thatcher in the 1980s.
In both 1983 and 1987 the Tories gained just over 42% of the vote , compared with a combined total of about 52% for Labour and the Liberal Democrats. The turnout in the two elections was 73% and 75% respectively. So about 30% of the registered voters actually supported the Tories. I would not call that “relatively broad support”.
Alan Gray
Brighton, East Sussex
• Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.
