We need to recognise that the government is broken and needs urgent repair

The other day I imagined what it would mean for this country if we reinvented our outdated ways of government and threw out the old rule book.

Addressing the disastrous demands made on the NHS, which spends roughly half of its money on trying to keep poor people as healthy as they can. Addressing the terrible reality that our supposed top universities seem to produce another generation of people who might be good at dinner party repartee but not very good at helping the world through its constant crises. And who erode the concept of working for the public and the common good.

A recognition that the government is broken and needs urgent repair is my biggest wish. That there would be some time spent trying to sculpt a new government rule book. And that the latest spring Budget was not another fudging that avoids addressing the reasons why there is so much increasing poverty in society.

The welfare state looked as if it was a real bullet. Good housing, good health, good education, and good jobs. Alas, good housing was only partially delivered, good health only partially, and the same partialness occurred in the realms of education and jobs.

We need an audit of the bits that work and the bits that don’t. For instance, social housing has to be turned on its head and made “sociable”. So that there are no ghettos of poverty, where the poorest among us are ringfenced from society. There is no democracy in poverty. It’s a murderer of ambition and the ability to choose how to live.

The government must take urgent action to help people out of poverty now by passing the Renters’ Reform Bill, uplifting universal credit, and unfreezing housing benefit.

Lord Bird

The Big Issue Founder – House of Lords

Boris Johnson argues that it was fair and reasonable to hold drinks parties for colleagues leaving a job they had worked hard in. And yes, we would all agree that gathering with colleagues, many of whom you dislike and most of whom you will never see again, drinking warm wine from plastic cups, is a fine British tradition.

However, at the same time, Johnson also effectively argued that my mother should leave this life without me, her only daughter, by her side holding her hand. Many people, young and old, were required to leave life without their families being able to say goodbye.

The only real similarity between these scenarios is that, like the colleagues you don’t really like, we will never see our loved ones again. For Boris Johnson to use the “it was important to say goodbye” defence of his own skin is appalling, revolting, and only passing with so little comment because it’s also so very typical of him.

Lindsay Gilmour

Plymouth

The Conservative party is now down to 25 Boris Johnson supporters including Priti Patel and Jacob Rees Mogg. With former backers like Chris Heaton Harris and Steve Baker now on the government payroll, I think Caroline Nokes is bang on to say that Boris Johnson is finished.

I watched the Partygate hearing and it’s crystal clear that Johnson was using excuse after excuse to try and wriggle his way around the Covid rules that he himself made.

So just what was Boris trying to achieve? To get off on a legal technicality?

Does Boris Johnson have no understanding or sympathy for people who died during the pandemic?

With David Cameron and George Osborne now set to be called before the Covid inquiry to explain what effect their cuts had on preparing for a pandemic, isn’t the truth starting to leak out already?

Namely that the Tories only care about the richest 1 per cent in society, that Boris Johnson remains in it just for Boris Johnson, and that the next election is going to see the biggest rewriting of the UK political map since 1997.

Geoffrey Brooking

Hampshire

When you report that Will Walden, Johnson’s former chief of communications of all people, says that his former boss’s behaviour at the privileges committee was “churlish, frustrated, disbelieving, stroppy, shameless” surely it’s time for all those who have given Johnson the benefit of the doubt to admit that they need now to consign him to history.

For Johnson, the arrogant belief in his own rule-breaking exceptionalism coupled with a craving for power and attention at all costs is enough to keep him defending the indefensible. As Chris Bryant implies, he is like a child who hasn’t learnt to take responsibility for his actions and learn from his mistakes. Meanwhile, what exactly do those who support him hope to gain from his continued political presence?

For those who became MPs on the wave of his boosterish populism, there may be a misguided belief that those shallow promises that led to them being elected might just do the same for them again. Without him, they fear that they may lose their well-paid jobs too soon. For the likes of Rees-Mogg and Johnson’s other wealthy sponsors, it is his cavalier spirit and the promise of rampant deregulation that they believe will enable them to continue to increase their already considerable wealth. And of the rest, who knows – maybe the chimera of simple answers to complex problems, the glitter of vanity projects, and the illusion of promises that are never fulfilled continue to have an allure for them.

Whatever it is that bolsters support for this charlatan, none of it speaks of anything that has been achieved or will be achieved that serves the nation’s long-term interests or the welfare and security of all its people. For all our sakes, “in the name of God – go.”

Graham Powell

Cirencester

Thank goodness Scotland’s first minister Nicolas Sturgeon has resigned. Perhaps now Scotland can move forward and the new administration can improve a lot of things for the Scottish people.

For eight long years, we have been treated to Sturgeon’s rhetoric on devolution and excuses for a disastrous administration. Arrogance and incompetence have been the hallmark of her tenure and she leaves Scotland in a parlous state.

No doubt she and the SNP will continue to claim successes and benefits from their time in power but the truth is that Scotland has been severely let down by this idealistic, narrow-minded party.

Hopefully, the next iteration of SNP administration will take stock of what the people of Scotland need to raise their living standards.

Devolution will not cure the ills of Scotland. It will not raise the living standards. It will not improve their NHS, education, drug problems, or transport. Only a competent and dedicated administration can do that. England hasn’t had that for 13 years and it is plain to see what has occurred. Scotland has had an incompetent administration for eight years and should be now looking for respite from the rhetoric of devolution instead looking after the needs of the Scottish people.

Keith Poole

Basingstoke