In announcing a general election, Rishi Sunak has had the last laugh

Recently, Rishi Sunak made the only decision he could make without having to consult the warring factions in his party first, by calling a snap election. At a stroke he has cast the lot of them adrift. He has had the last laugh.

Now Sunak has certainty and can plan for his future. He must know that he will lose the election, and I believe he will resign as party leader the same day. He will step down from parliament as soon as possible after that, and will return to the finance sector in a prestige role.

Who knows, maybe he will relocate to the US, and it will truly be his personal Independence Day.

Good luck to him.

Bernard Cudd

Morpeth

Rishi Sunak is forever banging on about his “plan”, yet he never tells us what his “plan” is...

Meanwhile, he claims that Labour will bring us back to “square one”. Square one is presumably when the Conservatives took over from Labour in 2010.

How were things back then at square one?

The NHS was doing well, with low waiting lists. No striking doctors. National debt was low. Inflation at 2 per cent. Tax allowances were rising. No striking rail workers. No striking teachers. No extortionate tuition fees. The UK had seamless trade and travel throughout Europe.

Although Chelsea were league champions, so life wasn’t perfect.

But as Rishi won’t tell us his great “plan” then fine, let’s go back to square one!

Barry Tighe

London

We are told by the prime minister that we cannot trust Labour because they do not have a plan, despite the fact that the party in opposition have spelled out their costed plans for renewal and regeneration with painstaking clarity.

The woeful image of the prime minister drenched by a rainstorm as he made the most important announcement of his political career showed the world that he and his followers are as incapable of planning for short-term eventualities as they are for planning in the long term.

As unedifying as it was for the prime minister to appear like a drowned rat trying to make his voice heard over the anthem of Labour’s 1997 landslide victory, the most undignified part of his presentation lay in what he had to say. Instead of calmly stating why he had chosen to call a general election, he chose to conduct a cheap party political broadcast on behalf of his discredited government.

Not only did he scrabble together a collection of spurious achievements for which he tried to claim sole credit, but he proceeded to tarnish the party in opposition and its leader with the usual array of unsubstantiated criticisms and insults.

And so begins six weeks of low-level debate and false promises in the vain hope that the electorate can be persuaded to give a party that has done nothing to deserve re-election yet another opportunity to drag us further into the overflowing gutter of their incompetence.

Graham Powell

Cirencester

Apart from no one bothering to alert the prime minister that he was stepping out of Downing Street into the wettest day so far this spring (a humiliating drenching to launch his campaign), did none of his aides think to remind him that the election date chosen, 4 July, is almost the same date as Labour’s largest-ever election thrashing of the Tories, on 5 July 1945?

If Sunak’s intention was to identify this coming election date with the UK’s national liberation and no doubt engage in some further Euro-bashing, it is more likely to be seized upon by a bruised and embittered electorate as the golden chance to free themselves and Britain from the shackles of 14 years of thoroughly discredited Tory rule.

Paul Dolan

Northwich

John Swinney has said that he will not support the recommended sanctioning of Michael Matheson for his dishonest use of a work iPad for personal purposes – his sons watching football in Morocco at a cost of £11,000 to the taxpayer.

I quite understand that the last thing Swinney wants is a by-election that would cost money the SNP does not have, and could perhaps cost him a seat at Holyrood that he cannot afford to lose. Nevertheless, his attempt to blame a member of the committee judging his case for prejudicing it, by saying only what was in the public domain, reeks of favouritism, desperation and, frankly, dishonesty.

Matheson has been found by the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body to have breached the MSPs’ code of conduct, with a committee of MSPs recommending a penalty of exclusion from Holyrood for 27 days and forfeiture of salary for 54 days. At Westminster, but not at Holyrood, such a recommendation would lead to the MP involved facing a recall motion. MSPs will vote on whether these sanctions should be applied. Once more, it seems that the votes of Ash Regan and the Greens will be critical.

It is absolutely extraordinary that John Swinney intends to protect an SNP MSP who has had to admit to lying in the chamber and elsewhere about the circumstances of his breach of conduct.

Jill Stephenson

Edinburgh