The Conservatives can’t compete with the public support for nurses on strike

Clearly, the health secretary doesn’t realise just how much public support there is for the nurses on strike. His latest tactic will not work.

The Torys’ underfunding of the NHS for years has led to the dire situation we are in now. The government effectively trying to blackmail nurses by saying that pay rises will compromise patient care is totally reprehensible.

But there is no sense of shame in this government, sadly.

Marilyn Timney

Hampshire

We seem to have 45 million people in this country who recognise the need for public sector workers to be given a decent pay increase and about nine conservative ministers who say it isn’t either needed or affordable.

I think I know who will win the argument once they start talking. The outcome will be decided in the next general election, if hasn’t already been decided by further Tory corruption.

Michael Mann

Shrewsbury

When I hear a government minister say “nurses do a wonderful job, but we have to be careful stewards of public money”, I want to ask them, why?

Why, when people are dying either waiting hours for emergency ambulances that should be there in minutes, or lying in hospital corridors for days when they should have been treated within hours? And why, when suicidal children are being sent home because there are no mental health inpatient places for them, is the government refusing to acknowledge that the UK is in the throes of a public health disaster of unprecedented proportions?

Why don’t they start governing instead of sitting in their well-appointed offices, paralysed with fear?

Why don’t they provide the money to fix health and social care, shutting down tax loopholes for their friends?

When will they stop making excuses and do something? Something purposeful. Or have they forgotten how to govern?

Alan Murray

Broughshane

David Davis is right that the Conservative party risks being consigned to 10 years in the wilderness if Boris Johnson persists in trying to make a comeback. In which case we must hope that Johnson continues his attempt, then we can be rid of all of them!

With any luck, the party might tear itself apart soon, and we needn’t wait two years for an election.

Susan Alexander

South Gloucestershire

Listening to ministers trying to convince us that striking health workers put lives at risk when thousands are already dying as a direct result of underfunding in the health service has my – and I am sure many others’ – blood pressure soaring.

Unlike wealthy Tory backers and politicians, these strikers are not just in it for the money – they are trying to fix a broken system. It is time conservatives were honest about their beliefs around health and education (but then of course they would never be in power).

Geoff Forward

Stirling

Two words recur in the deserved tributes to Jacinda Ardern on her resignation as prime minister of New Zealand.

Other leaders speak of her “honesty” and “empathy”. The ability to deal with people by telling them exactly how things are, whilst having the capacity to stand in others’ shoes and see things from their point of view.

Both of these qualities are essential if we are to address the problems that beset humankind.

The rapid decline in our values, well-being, and prosperity is the direct result of these qualities being absent from those who have led the UK government in recent years.

Graham Powell

Cirencester