Are personal beliefs something we have to accept in a leader?

Candidate for the leader of the SNP and first minister, Kate Forbes, who is a devout Christian and member of the evangelical Free Church of Scotland, has said she would have voted against the 2014 introduction of marriage equality in Scotland.

She explains that, despite this, she now respects current legislation.

Forbes is of course entitled to have religiously informed political views, and she was elected quite independently of them. But is the discrepancy between her support for the law as it stands and her actual personal beliefs something we could accept in a national leader?

Neil Barber

Edinburgh

The government appears bereft of any pro-growth ideas, simply sticking to the notion that hiking the corporation tax rate to 25 per cent will make a difference.

The reality is that the PM and his cabinet are out of touch with what the UK needs to kickstart growth. Increasing taxes has never and will never work. It’s counterintuitive and counterproductive.

One of the potential benefits of Brexit – the ability to set our own tax rates – has been squandered, not just by Rishi Sunak but also by Boris Johnson (who had even less commercial instincts than Sunak). Increasing the corporate tax rate sends completely the wrong message – to the country but also internationally.

The government is too scared of how a volte-face may be perceived by the public. Whatever Sunak does, it will be too little, too late – the Tories are toast at the next general election. Bereft of ideas, commercial instinct, and above all spine.

Miles Dean

London

Kate Hall’s recent letter highlighted the historically consistent desire within the Conservative Party to deregulate at every opportunity. In effect, their extreme ideology is laid bare. However, she also reminded us that a decent society needs protective regulations in order to function.

If the Brexit vote had been overwhelmingly in favor of leaving the EU, it would have been easy to argue that the electorate was thoroughly behind the desire to remove EU legislation from our statute books. But unfortunately for the Brexit hardliners, at 52 per cent to 48 per cent, this was not the case.

The desire to hastily and enthusiastically unpick hard-won regulations, that the UK contributed to whilst a key member of the union, is curious in itself. Who benefits from such actions? It certainly isn’t the ordinary citizen, as so cruelly demonstrated in the horror of the Grenfell fire, and those tens of thousands now left trapped and frightened in unsellable properties.

Nigel Plevin

Somerset

The UK’s spend on overseas aid is dwindling under Tory leadership. Development experts from the Centre of Global Development have found that the UK spends less of its foreign aid budget overseas in low-income countries than at home. This comes after the UK spent around £3bn of its aid budget housing refugees in 2022. It makes the UK the only country in the G7 to fund the entirety of the cost of housing Ukrainian refugees with its existing aid budget.

We must spend more on those in developing countries facing extreme poverty. Not only does everyone have the right to a decent and comfortable standard of living, but improving the conditions of the poor is essential to maintaining national security as poverty often leads to conflict and terror which has the capacity to cross borders into the UK. As well as this, boosting the economy of developing countries through foreign aid will expand the global market and boost our own economy.

Investing in eliminating global poverty is in everyone’s best interest.

Priya Thakkar

Address Supplied

Many people, while uncomfortable with the idea of killing animals for food, accept the commonplace assumption that animal welfare legislation looks after the animals’ wellbeing and that the animals lead lives largely free of stress, suffering and pain.

But that assumption is weakening in the face of growing evidence that animal welfare legislation is not fit for purpose, that it protects the interests of the stakeholders more than the animals themselves, and that the existing laws and regulations are routinely breached or, worse, ignored.

On factory farms across the globe, pigs and chickens, hens and rabbits, geese and other animals, live out their brief lives in windowless sheds in a crowded and stressful environment, growing at a phenomenal rate that is unnatural and unhealthy. The animals are fed a concoction of drugs, including antibiotics, to prevent the spread of disease, yet still suffer from a wide range of illnesses. Then, after a short, stressful life, they are cargoed to a factory that will slaughter them mercilessly, before appearing on our shelves in shops and supermarkets across the UK.

How does any of this fit in with good animal welfare practices?

Factory farming by its very nature is the antithesis of good animal welfare practice, and any legislative framework that gives the green light to the intensive rearing of farmed animals is clearly not fit for purpose.

Gerry Boland

Address Supplied