Patience Wheatcroft is absolutely right about Liz Truss’s lack of empathy (I was a Conservative peer – Tory voters will not tolerate Liz Truss’s bungs to the rich, 28 September), but her otherwise compelling argument also proves that Truss is merely the embodiment of an empathy vacuum sucking the humanity out of the rest of the party.
Wheatcroft argues that voters may balk at the increase in food banks and in-work poverty. However, the fact that Tory MPs would acquiesce with the cynical Truss project “if they had thought it would save their seats”, and only ditch her if they realised she was deaf to those on whom their seats depended, illustrates that their sensitivity to the public mood is entirely superficial and chronically self-serving. Whatever Tory empathy exists in parliament, it begins and ends with concern for themselves.
Paul McGilchrist
Colchester, Essex
