Theresa May’s recent criticism of the government is spot on

Theresa May is right. We should not, for example, have threatened to break the law as we recently did on our agreement with the EU. Also giving up our 0.7 per cent international aid target was deplorable.

Ms May understandably concentrates on foreign affairs. However, she could well have gone further and said something about domestic issues. It appears that recently two senior ministers – the home secretary, Priti Patel, and the business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng – have both broken the Ministerial Code and not been checked. This is a decidedly Donald Trump-like development that must cause deep concern for all concerned.

Rev Andrew McLuskey

Address supplied

With the Tory MPs voting to strip out the Lords’ amendment to the US trade bill to protect our NHS from privatisation, and with the UK now having the highest per capita death rate from Covid-19 in the world, after handing test and trace to their private sector chums, one might be forgiven for being suspicious of Tory attitudes towards the health of the nation. 

Ian Henderson

Norfolk

All decent people rejoiced in seeing Donald Trump leave The White House and will delight in him leaving the presidency. 

But Trump was a morbid symptom of the widespread misery produced by free-market capitalism. 

If the neoliberal order, which enriches a tiny minority and immiserates the vast majority, is allowed to continue to operate as it has for the last forty years then it will pave the way for the return of Trump, or someone much worse, in four years’ time. 

As the writer Victor Serge wrote of the 1940s: “For lack of anything better ... it is the failure of others that makes for the strength of the fühers. When there’s no worthwhile banner, you start to march behind worthless ones.”

Sasha Simic

London

As Joe Biden begins repairing the damage suffered during four years of the Donald Trump presidency, he will do well to look at a constitutional feature that allows any president to do what Trump did in the dog days of his tenure. He pardoned his associates from any criminal charges, yet he executed the only woman – Lisa Montgomery – who was considered mentally ill. Presidential pardons are what one has come to expect from tin-pot dictators, not from the head of a country which has encouraged democracy the world over.

Graham Barlow

Wirral

It appears that we are fast approaching the zenith of Brexit stupidity and hypocrisy. Despite vociferously campaigning to leave the EU, Roger Daltrey is now complaining that musicians and the wider performance sector cannot tour Europe without additional costs of visas, etc!

I wonder what part of “ taking back control of our borders” he did not understand?

Robert Boston

Kent

We shouldn’t be too critical in judging those Trump supporters who continue to think of him as the saviour of America, even though it’s clear to us he’s badly damaged its reputation abroad. We have the advantage of outsiders looking into that country while they have been subjected to years of propaganda aimed at exploiting their prejudices. 

Informed people in the USA, and elsewhere in the world, are probably equally perplexed that our prime minister remains popular with many Britons when considering, for example, his government’s illegal prorogation of parliament, attacks on the judiciary, Brexit and – apart from the NHS’s vaccination programme – the mishandling of Covid-19.

Roger Hinds

Surrey

As we, one of the richest countries in the world, absorb the shattering fact that we currently have the highest Covid death rate per capita in the world it is no longer satisfactory to simply “kick the can down the road” in efforts to find an explanation.

We have been hit with a “perfect storm”. An underfunded NHS (second-lowest spending on health in the G7, according to ONS figures, August 2019). Shocking poverty and deprivation revealed in the scandal of widespread food banks and by the efforts of Marcus Rashford. Finally, unlike the skipper and crew of the Andrea Gail in the film The Perfect Storm we have an ill-equipped, indecisive leader and an inexperienced crew who thought they were enlisting for “a booze cruise” celebration on HMS Brexit.

When we finally emerge to the new normality the people of this country must hold those responsible for the scale of this disaster to account and build a UK better able to cope with the uncertainties of the future.

John Dillon

Birmingham

Soon to be ex-president Donald Trump has stated: “I am especially proud to be the first president in decades who has started no new wars.”

Does this include internal wars and an attempt at insurrection? He has also been very slow to engage on the “war” against coronavirus.

He is not a leader, just a person with a lot of deluded followers.

Dennis Fitzgerald

Melbourne