I was beginning to quite like Rishi Sunak – until he started acting like this

Although not a Tory voter I was beginning to quite like Mr Sunak – and who wouldn’t, given the competition? But in his desperate final charge for the leadership he is beginning adopt a worrying number of misguided populist memes. Like many of his colleagues, he seems to want to hobble the courts’ interventions in administrative and constitutional issues. Now, he is revealing his suspicion of the value of scientific and medical advice during the pandemic.

Sunak must know perfectly well that in many areas of modern life we put our lives and livelihoods in the hands of highly-trained specialists – not just surgeons and airline pilots, but also in technicians in less high profile professions, like electricians, motor mechanics and software engineers. Most of us could certainly not have become high level financial managers in the City, as Sunak himself once was, without great natural ability and years of specialist training.

Where does this irrational animus against experts come from? We all get things wrong occasionally, but on complex issues outside my own experience, I would always trust an expert rather than my own horse sense.

Gavin Turner

Norfolk

Why has not the government required the installation of more solar panels on all public buildings, on every new house and on all public and supermarket carparks which will provide shade for cars when the sunshines as well as tapping into God’s free gift of sustainable power?

Jonathan Longstaff

Buxted, East Sussex

The unedifying debates between Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak continue to dishearten those of even a modicum of appreciation of what is really going on. The latest round reveals the pair trying to outdo each other by distancing themselves from the early essential decisions to help keep the maximum number of people safe during the early part of the pandemic in the spring of 2020.

To be fair, it would be difficult for either candidate to attempt to educate the majority of the conservative members nationwide who were continually misinformed about the seriousness of the situation that we were in at the time. Unlike Sweden, the UK has yet to hold an inquiry into the government’s handling of the whole matter. The only thing we can be sure of is this: if the government was really proud of the decisions and actions taken at the time and under duress, then that process of insightful, critical analysis, followed by a wide distribution of the findings, would also have already happened here too.

What is clear is that the disgraceful and unfathomable time lag between the infection becoming known and discretely labelled – and the moment the government belatedly decided to take drastic action – had a hugely negative impact upon everybody in the UK. This is borne out by the disproportionate number of people dying here, compared with our European counterparts. Our failure to restrict travel to – and from – known infection hotspots such as northern Italy, enabled sports fans, families (and school trips on skiing holidays) to return unchecked and effectively seed the virus throughout the length and breadth of the land.

Previous years of ideologically-driven austerity measures caused a significant contraction on NHS provision, effectively removing any slack there was in the previous system. This was also affected by our overcrowded and cramped state schools, with their poor ventilation and limited outside spaces – due to land having being sold off for profit. Society at large played its part in causing the requirements of a prolonged lockdown.

In the 1980s, Coastguard VHF radio training Included the following pertinent advice “engage brain before selecting mouth”. it’s a shame that these high profile, modern politicians seem reluctant, or worse still, unable, to do the same.

Nigel Plevin

Somerset

I read your editorial (“Following the science on Covid was right – whatever ministers think”, 26 August) with interest and agreement, but feel this is all a part of a populist whole championed by the wannabe prime minsters who want to devalue and undermine experts in their field. Now, Rishi Sunak is champing at the bit in his seeming distaste for lockdowns.

But if, as stated, they were right – and if other countries employed this strategy – were they completely wrong as well? It doesn’t add up. In those early, very frightening days it did indeed save lives and stopped the NHS collapsing completely under the weight of this dire, unknowable and lethal virus.

So here we go again, populist tropes to appeal to the freedom-loving Conservative membership is wrong-footed and misleading. Because many of these members will have very sadly lost family members. Personally speaking, if Professors Whitty, Valance and the great Jonathan Van-Tam were standing in this leadership contest, I would join the party and vote for any of them – because they enlisted my trust and gave us hard, unpalatable facts with assurance, knowledge and expertise.

But as they are not, I will adjure these candidates from going down this populist kamikaze path for short-term political gain, because it might come back to haunt them – and so, indeed, it should.

Judith A. Daniels

Norfolk

Sean O’Grady argues that the BBC must be “seen to be impartial” and what that means is defined by public opinion. The problem Emily Maitlis is pointing out is that this means journalism is impotent in the face of populism. Populist leaders push and divide public opinion to extremes and absurdities, whilst undermining confidence in journalism, and journalists go with it in a vain hope for balance and reasonableness, so treating absurdities and cruelties as legitimate topics of discussion.

Sean O’Grady insists journalists must do that; Emily Maitlis argues they must not. The problem if they do is two-fold. We, the readers, lose confidence in journalists who appear weak and vacuous. And journalists become more and more entrapped by the tactics of populism. Sean O’Grady offers no solution to how journalism should respond to populism, as Emily Maitlis really tried to do at the end of her presentation.

Duncan Fisher

Crickhowell