A once-sane party limps on

I agree with Jess Phillips that Boris Johnson lives on in Truss and Sunak, although Sunak might have a firmer grip on fiscal reality. It is all political groundhog day with this party, which has disastrously morphed into a populist entity, with its insistence on trashing laws, rules and anyone else who has the temerity to argue for a more middle-way, pragmatic and less extreme course.

It would have been so refreshing to have a cabinet outsider such as Tom Tugendhat, who I hope would have garnered all of what is left of the party’s talents around him and not just gone for toadying loyalists like in the previous incarnation.

This was the time for a complete reset for the party, but the Tory MPs bottled it. We are now left with the usual suspects. We will more than likely have to wait two long years for a general election, whilst this dog’s dinner of a once-sane party limps on.

Judith Daniels

Norfolk

Perhaps we could be left to make up our own minds about whether the EU’s demands for the Great Britain-Northern Ireland border are reasonable or not? We keep being told they are trivial, but nowhere do either you or the politicians tell us what they are, so that we can judge for ourselves. Unless controls on imports to Northern Ireland from Great Britain are as stringent as those for other entry routes to the single market, then of course smuggling routes will develop.

The DUP’s opposition to the controls is not about their rigour: it is about their very existence. Pleasing the DUP will require taking Northern Ireland out of the single market altogether, and reinstituting a hard border with the Republic. I cannot imagine that Sinn Féin would then allow the Northern Ireland executive to function, although I can see that Tory politicians would much rather be held hostage by republicans than unionists.

Theresa May’s proposals may have been unpalatable, but they would have worked, and we all would have been better off for it. They are still the only conceivable way forward that can preserve the union and prevent bloodshed.

Rachael Padman

Newmarket

While British officials rush to criticise their French counterparts for apparently not being in place at Dover, let us not forget the elephant in the room. This is not the first UK school summer holiday, but it is the first one post-Brexit without Covid travel restrictions. It is the first time therefore that we have had a hard border requiring full checks. The British government would do well to acknowledge the role of its Brexit choices in contributing to this mess.

Could it or should it have planned and prepared better to deal with the new requirements? Almost certainly. But the port of Dover sits in a geographical bottleneck wedged between the beach and the cliffs at the end of the funnel that is Kent, and there is no room for expansion. Meanwhile, over recent years the alternative ferry routes from the east coast to the continent have almost all disappeared. Where is the risk-based strategy for connecting our island nation to the outside world?

Truck drivers have been facing these issues for more than a year now, but no one seems to have seen this coming with the summer holidays.

Charles Wood

Birmingham

I read this afternoon that the port authority at Dover is encouraging the UK government to continue working with France to help ease the chaos caused by massive queues for passport control for outgoing traffic.

I have an idea that would help: the UK could rejoin the EU single market. Then passport control would no longer be required.

Richard Barlow

Wotton-under-Edge

To keep up to speed with all the latest opinions and comment, sign up to our free weekly Voices Dispatches newsletter by clicking here