Jonathan Freedland (I’ve got news for Rishi Sunak: he no longer leads the Conservative party, 29 September) gives us a vivid picture of the Tory government’s descent into rightwing populism. But is it the case that they have really changed the party into “something else entirely”? Could it rather be that Boris Johnson’s purge of the “one nation” Conservative MPs, in pursuit of a populist Brexit, has drawn aside a convenient veil of civic responsibility to expose the Tories in their true colours?
It was indeed the presence of these moderates at the top that safeguarded the Tories’ custodianship of the “long-established institutions” noted by Freedland. But there is another long-established institution whose perpetuation has been a core historical purpose for this party – the English class system, together with the privilege and injustice that it enshrines.
Perhaps the one positive to emerge from the disaster of Brexit might be the removal of this backward-looking party and the end of the Tory hegemony suffered by so many for so long. We would then be given the chance to start building a modern, inclusive and forward-looking nation under a government fit for the purpose.
Jonathan Cross
Shrewsbury
• Jonathan Freedland is right that what remained of Conservative party values have finally been ditched. This goes back to Margaret Thatcher’s days, with the attacks on local government through rate-capping, the enforced privatisation of council services and the sale of council houses.
As a Liberal Democrat councillor in Tower Hamlets, east London, in the early 1990s, I remember the outrage of many able and committed Conservative councillors. The devaluing of professions, another part of this movement, probably explains the falling away of support among those groups, which used to have strong Conservative elements.
But the most astonishing and appalling element has to be the neglect of the machinery of law and order in the underfunding of police, courts, lawyers, probation services and prisons.
Today’s Conservative leaders seem to have completely lost touch with any set of values rooted in democracy and the rule of law.
Gyles Glover
Cambridge
• As a former Conservative voter and indeed an ex-member of the party, I couldn’t agree more with Jonathan Freedland’s analysis. I have felt for some time that it’s not that I have left the Conservatives, but more that they have left me, as, in order to defeat Ukip, they have morphed in to that party themselves.
Brexit and populism have damaged their traditional role of conserving established institutions, obeying the law and protecting the environment. As Freedland correctly observes, the party is now more a radical party of destruction, for which I can no longer vote, and I fear the consequences for the country if it were to win the next election.
Katarina Tidball
Ringwood, Hampshire
• Jonathan Freedland suggests that the Tory party’s new logo should be a burning tree. Surely the felled sycamore at Hadrian’s Wall is a better representation of its policies – wanton vandalism perpetrated in the dead of night, miles from London.
Rory Murphy
London
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