The Tory Party has given us nothing more than a lost decade

Further to The Independent’s recent editorial, what has the Tory government actually done to improve the lot of the British public in their 13 years of governance?

Regardless of the impact of Covid and its derivatives, we have had an incompetent government at the helm. At great cost and harm, they have depleted our NHS, police force, and, other civil services through underinvestment and lack of future planning. We now find that Rishi Sunak and his cohorts want praise for bringing back staffing levels to what they already were a decade ago.

Various ministers make false promises to improve our social services, but it is just vote-seeking rhetoric. For several years the mantra that this government espouses is nothing more than puerile nonsense.

There is still no future planning to improve a long list of failed areas of government that stands up to scrutiny. And, as your editorial points out, ministers seem to ignore the past Conservative mismanagement and incompetent governance in favour of an unknown, baron future.

It is the Tory government that has caused Britain to plummet to such a low level of viability. We have levels of poverty that echo Victorian times, with children and their parents going hungry. Our housing stock is absurdly expensive, inadequate, and substandard. People are dying for want of hospital treatment, crime is rampant, and transport both tenuous and expensive. And now I read that our once great financial standing in the world is slowly being eroded in favour of New York and elsewhere.

In fact, we have been governed by a party that cares more about itself and staying in power than doing its best for everyone in the country. The embarrassing squabbling and back-stabbing in the Tory party have ruined this country. They have given us nothing more than a lost decade in which there was no improvement to our standard of living.

Keith Poole

Basingstoke

As our government, and especially Suella Braverman, clearly feel that the infamous floating prison, the Bibby Stockholm, is fit for habitation despite all the advice against it, I would like to make a suggestion.

Relocate it to the Thames, moor it outside the Palace of Westminster, and move all the MPs who support these loathsome policies on board. I am sure they would be delighted with the facilities and enjoy freedom from all the travel hassles they otherwise face. Any second properties they have to “enable” them to be in London could then be offered to refugees. Win-win!

To further enhance their lives they could have ankle tags so that when they go off to support their constituents (or more likely to their other jobs) they can be kept safe and secure by the overstretched and underfunded police services they have created.

Mike Margetts

Kilsby

The phrase “couldn’t make it up” is used far too often and on most occasions is totally erroneous. However, I feel that the news of Tory donor, Surinder Arora, having to possibly demolish part of his hotel – which incidentally hosted the Brexit agreement – due to a lack of planning consent, is worthy of such an accolade. In addition, it looks to me like a perfect analogy for the Conservative Party and their deleterious Brexit project: controversial and with very little planning!

Robert Boston

Kingshill

I must admit I too didn’t leap for unadulterated joy at seeing Suella Braverman grace my television screen and as rightly pointed out how can the police with such limited resources investigate each and every crime?

But then in the evening, I watched Sky Art’s David Hockney documentary and this cheered me up no end. There is something about his jaunty persona, enveloped in age-defying suits that really makes me smile, never mind his prodigious art which always attracts and delights.

I loved his lapel badge “End Bossiness Soon” – a mantra that might usefully be employed by government ministers.

Judith A. Daniels

Norfolk

Amélie Hunnable is absolutely right to plead with those in positions of power and influence to act now to limit the damage caused by our collective profligacy and, in some way, protect the future for subsequent generations.

It has come to something when our children’s children are telling us the painful truths about how we should behave while our politicians fight shy of confronting these issues for fear of upsetting the apple cart that allows the electorate to continue to indulge itself.

Eventually, we will have to be spoken to like grown-ups – not by the young but by politicians that recognise, amongst other things, that the present migrant crisis is nothing compared with the mass movement of people brought on by climate change. The existential threats that face life on earth are depending upon international cooperation between nations to forgo short-term profits as no substitute for long-term investment in those things that will future-proof the planet.

If we listen to Amélie and others in her generation, we may eventually come to recognise that we are brief custodians of life on earth who need to limit our excesses in order to secure a future for those who come after us. At the moment, it is clear that people like Amélie are the only adults in the room.

Graham Powell

Cirencester