Letters: Resounding silence greets Starmer’s reset

Jonty Bloom is right – this is a pragmatic attempt to restore trade relations with our nearest and most important trading partners after a near decade of damaging disruption from a hard Brexit that the OBR (Office for Budget Responsibility) calculates has cost the UK £32bn a year. In that context, the forecast boost to the economy of £9bn by 2040 looks modest, but this deal and the UK’s commitment to dynamic alignment hopefully sets us on the right course to single market status, or even re-integration itself, when the political climate allows.
Paul Dolan 
Northwich, Cheshire

It is always an immense pleasure to watch Brexiteers melt down on X and
GB News whenever the letters E and U are mentioned together. Maybe one day they will understand the value of compromise and win/win, and that this is not the definition of betrayal.
Guy Masters

The reset deal is welcome. As for Brexit itself, as my grandad used to say: no matter how much polish, time and elbow grease you put in, the simple fact is you can’t polish a turd!
Christopher Harrison

One important aspect missed by Ros Taylor in her fascinating article on Brexit and fishing (“Bone of contention”, TNE #436) is the lack of government action over decades to help coastal communities transition away from fishing, in much the same way as former industrial areas have been left to fend for themselves in the post-industrial economy. Margaret Thatcher, of course, was the culprit-in-chief with her conviction that the state must not interfere with the free market.

The real culprit is decades of underinvestment. If Lowestoft and Grimsby had been helped to diversify into other industries and were now thriving towns, I doubt fishing rights would be much of an issue.
Mark Grahame

Biden’s advisers failed
In his review of Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s book about Joe Biden’s disastrous second bid for the US presidency (TNE #436), Matthew d’Ancona rightly amplifies the argument that covering up Biden’s cognitive decline was an egregious error with terrible consequences. However, the responsibility for this error lies entirely with Biden’s circle of advisers, not with the man himself.

While it may be tempting to blame Biden’s ego, this rests on a misunderstanding of dementia. It doesn’t just make people forgetful or confused about immediate circumstances. It affects all aspects of personality and judgment. 

It’s typical for dementia sufferers to be unable to grasp what’s happening to them. This is an uncomfortable and scary situation at the best of times – but when the sufferer is the leader of the free world, the risks are obviously much broader in scope than those affecting the average pensioner. Biden’s advisers found themselves in an unenviable position – but they had an overwhelming responsibility, for everyone’s sake, to find ways to address what was happening honestly at a much earlier stage than they did.
Eleanor Toye Scott 
Cambridge

Biden was on the side of the angels for several very good reasons. He genuinely cared about “ordinary” people, he beat the crap out of Trump in 2020, and he and Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer got some seriously good legislation through Congress despite wafer-thin majorities in the House and Senate. He (or his administration) also got the US out of Covid in good order and left the odious Trump administration an economy in very good order.

The only thing I would hold against him was his inability to rein in Benjamin Netanyahu in Gaza. 

Biden firing on one brain cell would be better for the US and the world than Trump and his Project 2025 freakshow.
David Webb

Conforming to type 
I most certainly would not bet against David Roberts’s prediction of a Conservative-Reform merger (Letters, TNE #436). Mulling it over, I also predict a name change, to Conform Party, and a Tory continuation rump party until a really embarrassing by-election loss finishes them: think the SDP’s loss to the Monster Raving Loony Party, Bootle 1990.

Then, with far right parties across Europe in the ascendant and teetering on the brink of EU control, it will be none other than Nigel Farage who promises a glorious future if we rejoin the EU and consequently, he secures a general election win in 2034. Finally, we then have to endure years of a hard left party agitating to take us back out. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose! 
Robert Boston 
Kingshill, Kent

The Tories have been a major force in British politics since about 1690 (the exact date is disputed). They won elections by adjusting their sails to take advantage of any wind changes. Some called this cynical. Others called it realistic. 

I would never have expected the Tories to wreck themselves over an idiotic point of principle (Brexit). Is this what David Cameron meant when he described the Tory Party membership as “swivel-eyed loons”?
Don Adamson 
Bradford, West Yorkshire

Fuel for thought
Good to see a reversal of the winter fuel allowance cut in the offing (Alastair Campbell’s Diary, TNE #436). It was always a mad policy, as it attracted deep criticism while raising very little.

The big problem, though, is that wherever you draw the new line, how on earth do you identify the individuals who qualify? Currently it’s easy but if, say, you put the line at £25,000, how do you implement payment to individuals whose income is below that line?

I don’t think HMRC can help. Pensioners at that level of income hardly ever complete tax returns. 
Tony Slater 
Bristol

Far from unloved 
It was good to see two pieces in TNE #436 by Marie Le Conte – except both of them were about different ways she had been made to feel unloved and unwanted. Please be reassured that your readers, here and elsewhere, still love you! Keep up the good work.
Tony Jones

I felt shame and despair reading Marie Le Conte’s Dilettante column in TNE #436. Keir Starmer’s “island of strangers” comment makes no sense. Most of us live in cities surrounded by strangers. 

Worse are his quotes “Britain had become a one-nation experiment in open borders” and “the damage this has done is incalculable”. Are these really the words of a leader of the Labour Party?

The first statement is questionable in every word. The second seems not to be backed up by the available statistics. Why not attempt to calculate the incalculable and set out the facts plainly so we can decide ourselves?

I still hope good sense will prevail. Thank you for continuing to publish your interesting and thought-provoking paper.
Rosemary Brown

Marie Le Conte’s characterisation of the dismal no-man’s-land in which she finds herself rings depressingly true. But can I assure her that the mindset and values that she espouses aren’t confined to those in the age range, income brackets and locations she describes. We are everywhere: old and young, better and worse off, rural and urban. 

What really prevents us from making common cause is the antediluvian voting system for UK elections. That is what drives so much of the political positioning that she rightly decries. A system that seriously tried to give equal weight to everyone’s preferences would be a massive step towards a truly enfranchised population and more grown-up politics. Above all, it would offer new hope – at virtually no cost.
John Thomson 
Castle Douglas, Dumfries and Galloway

Marie Le Conte is most definitely welcome in Britain. If a person of such charm, wit, and compassion isn’t welcome here, then I’m off too. 
RSP Zatzen

To counteract the threat of Reform (Letters, TNE #435), Keir Starmer should enact proportional representation to replace our first-past-the-post voting system, which in Europe we share only with the dictatorship in Belarus. This would almost certainly result in a coalition, but it would allow progressive parties to form a coherent bloc able to address the concerns of the electorate and the undemocratic voices coming from the far right.

Changing the political landscape for ever would definitely be a case of thinking outside the box – clearly necessary when the whole shape of the box has so recently changed. To Starmer I would say: “Feel the fear and do it anyway.”
Robert Smith 
Totnes, Devon

Freedom to die
Sonia Sodha is in the wrong in opposing assisted dying (TNE #435). Such a decision should be entirely the prerogative of an individual without interference from anyone else.  

When my father was admitted to hospital in his final weeks, he knew his illness would end in delirium and hallucinations, and repeatedly expressed the wish to be “given a pill” so that he could end his life in dignity on his terms while he was still compos mentis. A friend in Germany recently ended her life, as the German constitution allows, in the presence of a doctor and having had the necessary psychiatric/medical approval. 

If I ever fall ill or become disabled to the extent I can no longer enjoy life, I want the legal right to end it in a way of my choosing. No one should have the right to make me prolong my life against my wishes. No one who does not want to use a process of assisted dying need do so, but they should never impose their wishes on me.
Bill Cooper 
Kinross, Scotland

Language exchange
Peter Trudgill’s article on the variety of languages in the USA (TNE 434) reminded me of the London journalist William Howard Russell’s trip there in 1863. In “My Diary: North and South”, Russell recorded this exchange outside Washington on the late arrival of his horse:

““Good heavens! Did I not tell you to be here at seven o’clock?” “No, sir; Carl told me you wanted me at ten o’clock, and here I am.” “Carl, did I not tell you to ask James to be round here at seven o’clock.” “Not zeven clock, sere, but zehn clock. I tell him, you come at zehn clock.” 

“Thus at one blow was I stricken down by Gaul and Teuton, each of whom retired with the air of a man who had baffled an intended indignity, and had achieved a triumph over a wrong-doer.”
Phil Jones 
Bourne End, Bucks

BELOW THE LINE
Comments, conversation and correspondence from our online subscribers

Thanks for “The power of the underdog”, Simon Barnes’s wonderful tour of random underdogishness (TNE #436). “Part of football’s universal popularity is the way it provides more underdog victories than any other sport in the calendar” gives me a tiny inkling of a reason for our incomprehensible national obsession with football.
John Valentine

Philip Ball (Critical Mass, TNE #436) asks why MAGA is anti-science. Donald Trump is anti-science because it remains true whether you believe it or not. Science is the search for truth – anathema to Trump and MAGA. 
Russell Sage

Re: “A nuclear leap into the unknown” by Paul Mason (TNE #436). From the end of WWII we have had a clear idea about what was what and who was who. We were able to handle shocks like Sputnik, the death of Stalin and various White House changes, but we are no longer in that world. We now have technology we don’t fully understand, coupled with an apparent collapse in old political structures. With hindsight, at the collapse of the Soviet Union we should have been looking for unforeseen consequences rather than business opportunities. Learn from this and accept we need to be nimble and cooperative, and beware of carpetbaggers like Trump.
John Simpson

Unfortunately, it seems the more “intelligent” technology gets the more idiotic humanity becomes, or perhaps it’s just that human intelligence is simply going to remain static while machines outpace us.

The development of “assets” such as these – ditto, hypersonic missiles and God knows what other ‘toys’ the military technologists are dreaming up – will, no doubt, be of enormous benefit to mankind.
Steve Buch

Great Lives (TNE #436) missed Robert Capa’s coverage of the Battle of Troina, part of the forgotten war in Sicily, where he took poignant pictures of the encounter between the defeated Germans (with the Italians) and the ultimately victorious Americans. The inspired mayor, Fabio Venezia, has devoted a whole museum to Capa and his coverage of this largely unknown encounter. The museum is well worth a visit.
Simon Stoddart

JOIN THE CONVERSATION
Subscribe and download our free new app to comment and chat with our writers