Tory cronyism puts Sir Keir Starmer in better light – Yorkshire Post Letters

WHILE sharing Malcolm Nicholson’s disappointment with Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer’s performance in recent months, I’m not writing him off just yet (A critical situation, The Yorkshire Post, April 17).

At the start of the year, it was arguably a reasonable political judgment to step back and assess Brexit’s impact. Reasonable then – not now.

As Mr Nicholson notes, opposition to Brexit hasn’t subsided amongst Labour supporters and it’s unlikely to do so given how bad the first 100 days-or-so have been since our EU transitional arrangements ended.

Labour leader Sir Keir has ruled out rejoining the European Union, but there’s still much to be done to repair damage caused by a disastrous hardline Brexit that doesn’t resemble those 2016 Vote Leave “no downsides” campaign promises.

Much of the Conservative Party’s recent polling success is reportedly built on something I find unfathomable – Boris Johnson’s popularity. In other words, built on foundations that are shallow, untrustworthy, bumbling and complacent. And looking especially shaky, elitist and entitled as further alleged Tory sleaze, cronyism and “chumocracy” is uncovered.

Thinking about it, that Starmer chap doesn’t look so bad.

From: Gordon Lawrence, Sheffield.

JAMES Bovington (The Yorkshire Post, April 14) must believe that Brexit enthusiasts go to sleep at night dreaming of Britain’s sabre-rattling days when he accuses us of “a deeply unpleasant nastily isolationist and jingoistic side”.

He always fails to understand that people voted for Brexit because they wanted freedom from the undemocratically appointed hierarchy residing in Brussels, living the ‘life of Riley’ at our expense, legislating ad lib trying to accommodate, as they see it, the different needs of 28 disparate countries and rarely pleasing anyone and certainly not Great Britain.

He supports his case by invoking the idea that Brexit is all about division and barriers when he fails to acknowledge that Britain was historically the bastion of free trade (Adam Smith, Ricardo, Peel, Marshall, Keynes), and is now searching for new trade deals worldwide, and thus hoping to cut impediments that normally inhibit international development.

The EU, on the other hand, is the epitome of red tape, often quoted as “a protection racket,” all blatantly exemplified in its post-Brexit attempts to teach Britain a punishing lesson for divorcing itself from its grasping tentacles.

As an independent country, it’s actually in our own interests to cultivate ties with other friendly states and we now have the freedom to do it.

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