Do our wealthy politicians really know how the other half lives?

Tom Peck’s article about Lee Anderson's delusional nonsense about the cost of living and food bank use led me to consider whether our governing class has completely forgotten its duty of care to us, the people who elect them.

Simply put, they are there to maintain our country in a safe and secure way. To maintain a happy and healthy life. To ensure our environment can sustain us.

When we look at the catalogue of strife and stress our government is putting us through, I seriously wonder whether Lee and his colleagues – with their safe salaries, second homes in London, extensive taxpayer-subsidised food, and remarkably open-ended expense allowances – can have any idea how the other half live?

When children in our country are dying of polluted air or mould from damp housing; when professional employees are feeling forced to use food banks to eat; when mortality rates vary by upwards of ten years depending on where a person lives; when more and more school children are falling in to poverty; when our rivers and coast are quite literally covered in filth.

The real question for Anderson and his colleagues is as follows: with all that in mind, when are you going to stop talking and actually do something to affect positive change in even one of those areas?

John Sinclair

Pocklington

Kier Starmer is wrong to assert that there is no political case for rejoining the European single market and customs union, for the simple reason that there was never any political case for leaving them.

The referendum of 2016 left membership of these organisations as an open option. Rejoining is the simplest, quickest, most cost-effective way to start undoing the damage done by Brexit.

Tom Varley

Cumbria

Thank you to Mick O’Hare for his article about Brexit.

All those of us who agree that we are politically homeless (as no political party is offering us an application to rejoin the EU) should voice their frustration and come together.

While I understand that our voting system calls for parties to play politics, please would some parties explain in detail how they would address this, the most damaging act of self-harm in British history?

Jan Hitchcock

Leigh on sea

As James Moore says, “levelling up” is at its heart a con job, and has now been clearly demonstrated to be as such.

The very phrase is senseless. Simply levelling everything up would require unlimited resources. You can level things out, but only by raising the bottom and lowering the top. And that would necessitate redistribution, a concept that is anathema to government that relies on its wealthy supporters.

Susan Alexander

South Gloucestershire

Regarding the tax due to HMRC which Nadhim Zahawi appears to have been rather late in paying: I wonder if there could be a poll asking the British public if they believe that this is the kind of behaviour they expect from an ex-chancellor of the exchequer and current chair of the Conservative Party?

Colin Burke

Cumbria