Rishi Sunak’s tax revelations are a stroke of luck for the prime minister

What a stroke of luck for Boris.

Just as he is working hard to convince the electorate and his Tory party critics that he is a serious leader and that everyone should forget about Partygate, his total lack of morals and all the fibs he has told in parliament, someone just happened to leak potentially damaging information to the press about the only serious contender to replace Bozza in a leadership contest.

And then, just as there was a teeny bit of uncertainty about whether the tax arrangements of Rishi Sunak’s wife were enough to do the job and rule Mr Sunak out of any leadership contest, more information comes to light about Rishi’s own tax arrangements, including having a US green card, therefore paying tax in the US while living in the UK, and being the beneficiary of a few offshore accounts in a few tax havens. All while setting higher taxes for the taxpayers of the UK.

What an extraordinary coincidence. And even better, there’s the nasty old Labour Party to blame. What a lark!

Karen Brittain

York

So that’s Liz Truss as the next prime minister then.

Martin Redfern

Roxburghshire

There’s rich, and then there’s stinking rich. What I can’t understand is why extremely wealthy people seem to be obsessed with amassing more and yet more money, when they already have more than enough – many times over – to finance a highly luxurious and opulent lifestyle.

They seem dedicated to multiplying their money using any means they can, but there is only so much anyone can spend.

Some people with modest incomes often look at their own needs and desires, and then give part, or indeed all, of the surplus to charities. Some run marathons or cake stalls for good causes.

Just think what Akshata Murty’s back taxes could do. Such a large sum could boost the actual government’s spending power – for example, financing Sure Start centres, so callously abolished by the Tories some years ago. And does Rishi Sunak really need to draw his minister’s salary? That must be peanuts to him.

Being rich through entrepreneurial skill or other talent is perfectly fine, but manipulating the system to keep multiplying your riches is not so justifiable.

Many, including me, wonder why the hugely wealthy royals have such an iron grip on their wealth, creaming off public money to live on while their own money just expands in safety. But the Sunak family don’t have the loyalty of hordes of blinkered royalists behind them, so what is their excuse?

Penny Little

Oxfordshire

President Zelensky’s just claim that the UN serves no purpose with a Russian Security Council veto demands prompt remedial action.

As national, local elections, referenda and corporate resolutions are decided by majority vote, if the UN is to survive as an effective force, it must amend its constitution to remove the veto from any member of the Security Council that wages war and uses the UN platform to commit perjury by denying evidence of its complicity in the wholesale slaughter of innocent civilians that is currently there for the world (outside Russia) to witness on TV.

Trevor Lyttleton

London

In a recent interview, Garry Kasparov was asked if Putin was a chess player, to which he responded no, he was a poker player.

As I understand it, poker is a game of bluff and in the run-up to his invasion, he played his hand well. Amassing troops on the border and threatening reprisals should the west intervene, and more recently, also threatening to use nuclear weapons.

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Biden, on the other hand, effectively showed his hand by repeatedly stating that he and Nato would not be putting troops on the ground nor assisting with “offence” weapons support, unfortunately fearful of the reaction at home to getting involved in yet another war.

Unlike previous military engagements on foreign soil, however, this would not be unjustified aggression or regime change, but coming to the aid of an innocent European country subject to the ambitions of a brutal dictator.

Having overlooked Putin’s past actions in Chechnya, Georgia, Crimea and Syria, we have made it plain that we will do nothing to stop him, now or in the future. For every threat issued by Putin, the west should be matching his bluff with threats of our own. Sanctions, however severe, will not do the trick and may indeed strengthen the Russians’ resolve, especially as they only hear his propagandist version of events.

I am appalled at the west’s lack of military assistance in terms of supplying fighter planes and other so-called offensive weapons, and their refusal to put in place some sort of no-fly zone. Nato is not being asked to invade Russia, merely to assist Ukraine to defend itself against genocide.

Of one thing I am certain – Putin will not stop at Ukraine if he gets away with this sort of behaviour again.

G Forward

Stirling