Andrew Rawnsley is right to point to fundamental differences between the Conservative and Labour leaders (“Rishi Sunak v Keir Starmer: battle of the speeches revealed the critical choice facing Britain”, Comment). For too long we have tolerated the meme of a “divided country” as a media lament. In politics and ethics, division and argument are symptoms of a democracy – the more, the healthier. We are not at “all in this together”. Conservatives are the party of the “bedroom tax” and cuts to child benefit. Labour is the party that lifted 500,000 children out of poverty. Since the Second World War, the Conservatives have never left government without significant debt; one of the rare periods of budget surplus was under Labour and Gordon Brown’s chancellorship. What is corrosive of democracy is the voter who complains: “I’m really not sure who to vote for.” The choices are, as Rawnsley suggests, far starker and easier than that.
Prof Saville Kushner
Liverpool
The “critical choice facing Britain” is between Sunak, who can barely keep control, and Starmer, who offers to give back control by allowing public access to the levers of power rather than placing them under the lock and key of shady cabinet deals.
Austen Lynch
Garstang, Lancashire
NHS at half capacity
In “Crisis: why our health service is falling apart” (Focus), the most glaring statistic is that the UK has 2.4 hospital beds per 1,000 people compared with an OECD average of five. For those of us who have worked in the NHS, it has been obvious for years that the reason we are constantly under so much pressure is that we don’t have enough capacity. It’s a testament to the hard work and dedication of NHS staff that the system has kept running as well as it has for so long on just half the capacity of our European neighbours. Imagine what the French and German health systems would look like if you closed down half their hospitals.
Dr Antony Dowd
Wollaton, Nottingham
Rethink EU law bill
The government’s retained EU law bill, which returns to parliament this week, gives civil servants a year to review and potentially scrap about 4,000 regulations established during the UK’s membership of the European Union. As yet, parliament doesn’t have a full list of what regulations could be deleted, but we do know it includes vital protections for river quality, clean air, consumer health and workers’ rights. Many have been on the UK statute book for years and provide crucial protections and certainty for business and the wider public.
Ministers are choosing to apply an arbitrary, unmanageable deadline to review these laws and then giving themselves the power to decide what happens next, rather than parliament. MPs who support this bill as it is presented are voting to remove any control they might have over crucial rights – in effect, signing away their jobs. The lack of clarity over what is covered by these powers significantly increases the likelihood of mistakes being made if current laws are redrafted, and effectively provides a vehicle for deregulation by the back door. The government must respect parliamentary scrutiny and rethink this bill.
Stella Creasy MP, Labour (Co-op); Brendan O’Hara MP, Scottish National party; Sarah Olney MP, Liberal Democrats; Caroline Lucas MP, Green party; Claire Hanna MP, Social Democratic & Labour party; Hywel Williams MP, Plaid Cymru; Stephen Farry MP, Alliance
Iran’s government in waiting
More than four decades of misguided engagement by the west has failed to help the long-suffering and oppressed Iranian people, who now feel that the only way to gain their human rights and freedom is to bring about regime change (“Iran and the west are on a deadly collision course”, Editorial). Here, at last, the crucial question is posed. The answer for the west must be aligned to the desire of the people for freedom and democracy. Why then, are our and all other democratic governments not engaging with the organised opposition movement, made up of an established coalition of various faith, ethnic and political groups, represented by the National Council of Resistance of Iran, led by president-elect Maryam Rajavi? The NCRI is ready with a fully structured parliament, currently based in France, and explicit policies to inform a transitional government that would lead to free, fair, internationally monitored elections within six months of the fall of the regime.
Jennifer Carter
London NW2
Blasphemy? Unlikely. Racism? No
I found myself in total agreement with Kenan Malik’s withering assessment of the controversy at Hamline University (“An art treasure long cherished by Muslims is deemed offensive. But to whom?”, Comment), particularly in his observations on public institutions and their tendency to legitimise the most reactionary Muslim voices, thereby undercutting the very progressives from our communities who put the lie to many anti-Muslim stereotypes.
As Malik and many others demonstrate, the Islamic artistic canon has always included visual depictions of the prophet Muhammad. However, even if the university instructor’s presentation did violate Islamic precepts, it would still not be an expression of racism. That the majority of the world’s Muslims tend to be non-white does not automatically make “blasphemy” a question of racial prejudice. Indeed, there are many of us who are people of colour, with or without Islamic heritages, who would rather not see the anti-racist struggle be disfigured by its recruitment to the enforcing of religious orthodoxies, regardless of how contrived that “orthodoxy” happens to be.
Zaid Salam
Normanton, West Yorkshire
Sibling rivalry
The solution to last week’s Guess the painting by Laura Cumming (the New Review) is A Family Group by Bernardino Licinio, a painting from 1524 in the Royal Collection. According to its website, the cross, red-headed child has a look of “aggrieved self-importance” and is anxious to “establish herself against all her older siblings”. Ring any bells?
Toby Wood
Peterborough, Cambridgeshire
