Boris Johnson will have no qualms about working with Farage once he’s PM. Remain MPs need to get their act together

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Thursday 20 June 2019 18:43 BST
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Conservative leadership bid: Results of fifth ballot

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I am writing In response to your report that Nigel Farage is willing to do a deal with Boris Johnson to only field single Brexit candidates in constituencies in the next general election.

Before they go ahead with this, all Remain politicians must examine their consciences and ask themselves why they entered politics in the first place.

Was it merely for their own personal glorification of being an MP, not actually caring whether or not they’d effect change? Or was it actually to get elected and do some good?

Make no mistake, with our electoral system, nearly every single Brexit candidate will win. This will give them an overwhelming mandate for a hard Brexit and they’ll require a mere 25 per cent of the vote to do so.

All Remain candidates, therefore, in each constituency, if they actually wish to save us from Brexit, must also do a deal to stand down in favour of the Remain candidate most likely to beat the Brexiteer.

This is easy to ascertain from local opinion polls. There is absolutely no room for self-satisfied complacency on the part of any Remain party politician.

They’ll either all go down in history as self-serving non-entities more concerned with their status as political candidates than anything else, or as those who were prepared to save our nation from an absolutely disastrous Brexit.

For all our sakes, I beg all Remain party leaders and politicians to do that deal. If you don’t, our once great nation will sink completely into the mire and those who voted for Brexit will suffer most.

Edward Lyon
Address supplied

This leadership race is an embarrassment

Victoria Derbyshire has said it will be a “busy day” for Tory MPs with, gosh, two rounds of voting today.

My, what a hard job. Never mind cocaine, no wonder the alcohol bill in parliament is so high. They never get asked about that, do they?

That the majority are going to have one of a group of utterly inept people forced on them by a party whose average age is 57 is a disgrace.

Penny Mordaunt has just stated that the population will be shocked by her suggestion that MPs are engaging in tactical voting. Oh right, because you’re all so ethical, aren’t you?

Mordaunt and Jeremy Hunt presided over severe cuts to the NHS which destroyed people’s lives. These people – Tory MPs and members of the party – are a disgrace and they epitomise all that is awful about us.

R Kimble
Leeds

Whatever the outcome of the Tory leadership battle, will the last one out please turn off the lights?

Richard Walker
West Malvern, Worcestershire​

Tory race and Newton’s third law of motion

Your article “Rory Stewart is out. The Tories have killed of the truth teller so that lies might live” tells an interesting story.

Early on, when Stewart was an outsider, the Tory leadership process highlighted the political equivalent of Newton’s third law of motion.

It seemed that political lies helped an unfancied outsider to react with equal and opposite honesty.

No wonder Boris Johnson and his colleagues were rattled. The more they blustered, the more they were faced by the truth.

Now, having cleared Stewart from their ranks to promise a unicorn Brexit, the truth will still come out – only too late to save jobs, the union and the NHS.

John Young
Address supplied

Why call Boris Johnson ‘racist’ at all?

I am no fan of Boris Johnson, but Ian Blackford serves no useful purpose by calling him “racist”. All Mr Blackford does is devalue the currency of the word “racist”, which seems to have become an all-purpose term of abuse much as “fascist” was in the 1970s.

There are many things about Mr Johnson that can be criticised, and Mr Blackford would be well advised to concentrate on them rather than slinging thoughtless insults intemperately.

Jill Stephenson
Edinburgh

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World refugee day

On World Refugee Day, we need to question our habit of thinking of refugees as a “problem”. This country’s greatest achievements have been enhanced by the contribution of high-powered colleagues who’ve arrived here seeking refuge from persecution, conflict or global crisis.

Language that alienates and misrepresents those who are actually “people”, and describes them as if they were a threat, corrupts our understanding of what makes a country like Britain great.

Catherine Rowett
Green Party MEP for East of England

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