Letter: Tories and Europe

Sir: M J Knight (letter, 7 January) has a strange view of recent political history if he believes that the last general election was a vote against the "Patrician Tendency", a strand of Toryism which has always, no doubt motivated by a sense of noblesse oblige, been of the One Nation variety.

No, it was a vote against the Tory Party itself, which for at least ten years before had been dominated by those dogmatic, uncaring apostles of unbridled self-interest, the "Parvenu Tendency", whose doctrine is best summed up by that infamous remark of the shopkeeper's daughter: "There is no such thing as society," and who now are both characterised and led by William Hague.

JOHN DAVIS

Bookham, Surrey