We need a general election now – we didn’t agree to any of this

The government introduces a financial package guaranteed to produce more billionaires and attendees at food banks. It reverses policies set out in the Tory manifesto of 2019, like the ban on fracking. So when did the people agree to this new manifesto for the country? Well, actually they didn’t; just 81,000 members of the Tory party voted for Liz Truss’s brave new world. She has no popular mandate. Surely, a greater number of the 67 million who inhabit these islands should have a say. We need a general election now.

Paul Donovan

Wanstead

A quick internet search revealed there are 3,500 economists working in the UK government. Supposing a majority of – say – 3,000 of those highly qualified people agree that Liz Truss’s policy are good long term... she might think “result!”

Obviously, not all the Conservative Party members (174,000 of them) agree with her, but will nevertheless vote for her in a general election anyway. Result! Put the same question to 47 million voters in a general election and, even if the economists were right, it kind of rubs them up the wrong way to know that when someone else gets their salary (plus double, as a bonus) it ain’t enough.

Robert Aylott

Scunthorpe

The new PM and chancellor, in their determination to cut taxes, are taking a huge gamble with the country’s financial wellbeing by greatly increasing the national debt. Their supporters are pleased to point out that the debt of the other G7 countries is even greater than ours. But they omit to mention that we are the only one that has chosen to cut itself off from its main trading partners, without “delivering” (Truss’s favourite word) on any worthwhile alternatives.

Susan Alexander

South Gloucestershire

An objection to the cap on bankers’ bonuses was that it artificially forces up their base pay. With the cap now removed I have searched both Friday’s and today’s editions in vain for the expected announcement of a corresponding salary cut. How can I have overlooked it?

Nick Kerry

Cambridge

How splendid to see the name Reginald Maudling mentioned by Sean O’Grady in Saturday’s edition (’How did our other “dash for growth” chancellors fare?’).

I have not seen him mentioned, nor have I thought about him in many a year. The other quote from him that I clearly remember was after the 1970 election, in which Labour lost power after six years in office: “Britain was now a Conservative country that sometimes voted Labour.”

The words came back to bite him as Labour won two elections in 1974. Hopefully, the electorate will digest the true implications of Friday’s mini-Budget and vote to ensure it joins the “lessons to be learned” journalistic fodder of the future.

Robert Boston

Kent

Have I understood this correctly: Kwasi Kwateng has abolished the health and social care levy and borrowed billions of pounds to give away to rich people?

Helen Bore

Scarborough

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I was so appreciative to see the great Hilary Mantel pictured on your front page with the heading “One of the greatest writers of our time” – and isn’t that the truth?

I gasped when I heard the very sad news that she had died suddenly but peacefully, just another shocking reminder of how tenuous our lives feel at the moment. I then read Claire Allfree’s column with interest: she is correct that Mantel will always be remembered and justifiably for her masterful trilogy, commencing with the seminal Wolf Hall. I relished every involving word, because, as Allfree states, it is so immediate and the reader is thrust mind and body into the machinations of King Henry VIII’s court and his chief “mover and shaker”, Thomas Cromwell.

She was such a great writer and her apposite descriptions were so pertinent and imbued with words and images that left an indelible impression on the reader’s mind. I feel she was a one-off who escaped totally into the world of her writing. The literary world has indeed lost an icon with her untimely death.

Judith A Daniels

Norfolk