It’s Angela Rayner who has the amazing debating skills

I was at Oxford at the same time as Boris Johnson, but I am glad to say I never met him, as we clearly moved in very different circles – I was never a Bullingdon Club member, for example.

And I would like to congratulate Angela Rayner on her education, her experience as a mother, and her amazing debating prowess which, I am sure, is at least partly due to the life skills which make her an excellent representative of the people of this country.

I am regretful that our prime minister’s life experiences seem to consist of breaking rules, avoiding being held to account, and expecting other people to pay the price.

Isn’t that what criminals do?

Katharine Powell

Neston

When it comes to those comments about Angela Rayner, I think it’s time for the old school discipline I bet these Tories enjoy.

When Rayner used the word “scum” to say what she thought of them, she did so under her own name and took the backlash on the chin. But here we have a Tory name calling anonymously who’s too cowardly to own up.

If I was in charge, I’d keep all the boys behind in class at the end of the day and tell them they’re staying there until the culprit owns up. Perhaps, for once, it’s not that naughty Boris Johnson this time.

Sarah Wood

Scotland

Elon Musk must be the first homeless person in history to purchase a company worth $44bn (£35bn). I guess he is giving hope to homeless people around the world that you can dream big!

At the same time, it shows how toothless modern government is. Instead of controlling powerful interests in society for the public good, they concede even more power to the powerful, and then shrug their shoulders only to say they are an international problem.

No wonder voters everywhere are increasingly voting for extremist political outfits, as we have seen in the French presidential election, because they see the mainstream in cahoots with the homeless and the untouchables (billionaires, oligarchs, globalists). This is a problem that is going to boil over one day.

J Khan

Address supplied

The Conservative government is not just a national joke, but a global one.

Off goes our so-called leader to scatter flower petals in India while people in Britain cannot afford to heat their homes, while one of his ministers spends his time snooping around offices to check on who’s working from home rather than who’s doing a good job, and refugees are treated shabbily by the very minister who should be helping them.

Why can the British public not call a vote of confidence and request a general election early?

L Robertson

Orkney

I was amused by Adam Forest’s article on Johnson seeking ideas on easing the cost of living crisis just after Jacob Rees-Mogg, increasingly a surreal mix of Voldemort and David Brent, embarked on a campaign to bully civil servants to return to their desks.

Wages, as we know, are not keeping pace with prices overall, let alone the massive hike in essential utility costs. Civil servants, in common with many other public sector workers, earn less in real terms than they did back in 2010 when the Tories took power.

Most civil servants can’t afford to live in central London where their offices are situated, so need to travel to work, often from faraway towns, to quote The Clash’s “London Calling”. The cost of a monthly season ticket from Bracknell, for example, is around £400 a month (I fully appreciate this wouldn’t cover the first half hour of No 10’s weekly wine bill but it’s a fair chunk of the average person’s wages all the same).

Studies show that remote working can boost productivity, but despite this, the government wants civil servants to be standing to attention at their desks every day because some on the right, like Rees-Mogg, feel working from home is woke and not to be encouraged.

So, a suggestion for Johnson – combine two policies and give Jacob a one-way ticket to Rwanda, let workers work remotely if they choose and spare the rest of us his utter contempt for the little people who are just trying to get by and live their lives as best they can.

John Murray

Bracknell

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Research from the London School of Economics highlighting the “steep decline” in the number of trading relationships with the EU post-Brexit is hardly a surprise.

The report notes that the UK’s post-Brexit trade deal with the bloc has created red tape at the border, thereby curbing the ability of especially smaller firms to export. It has seen the number of relationships between buyers and sellers tumble by a third after the introduction of the EU-UK trade deal in January 2021.

This chimes with warnings from business groups that smaller firms have struggled to absorb customs controls, VAT and regulatory red tape, with many quitting exporting altogether.

The findings are another worrying sign of the negative impact that the Trade and Cooperation Agreement between the UK and EU is having on UK exporters. It is also even more damaging as there is considerable evidence that future growth in trade comes from firms that are small today, and killing off those exporting relationships may lead to lower future export growth.

Last month, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), the government spending watchdog, warned that UK trade had “missed out” on much of the recovery in global trade and was lagging all other G7 economies. The OBR estimates that total UK imports and exports will be 15 per cent lower over the medium term than if Britain had remained part of the EU.

The Brexit dividend we were promised is proving to be a total illusion, a massive con perpetrated against the British people, but one which many of us repeatedly warned about.

Alex Orr

Edinburgh