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.
