The EU referendum campaign is turning statesmen into snake oil sellers

Send your letters to letters@independent.co.uk

Boris Johnson visits David Nieper Ltd, a manufacturer of luxury women's clothing and nightwear (Getty)

Your excellent article in the Sunday daily edition (‘Did the Tories steal the election by failing to declare local campaign spending?’) raises serious issues at the heart of UK politics. The issue of convenient attribution of election expenses is just another indicator of how our politics is corrupt, self-serving and undemocratic.

Whether or not the nation votes to stay or leave the EU on June 23, we can look forward to being governed badly by politicians serving the needs of their party machines, with scant regard for the good of the nation, or of those least able to look after themselves.

These revelations are not new; to a greater or lesser extent we have suffered from party-serving politicians for as long as party politics has existed. The novel element has been brought to the fore by the European Union referendum. Freed from towing the party line, we can now see previously high regarded and loyal Tory MPs tearing at each others’ throats, accusing one another of lying, and of fear-mongering.

Who would have thought that we could ever sink so low as to have Boris Johnson telling us that the European Union places restrictions on the number of bananas allowed to be sold in a bunch, and that if the European Union get their way, the country will be awash with Cornish Pasties made in any member country?

Some of us always knew that David Cameron was less than sincere when he stated that his Government would reduce immigration figures to “tens of thousands”. It took the relaxation of politics as usual (referendum campaigning) for the revelation to emerge that this statement was dishonest.

If we really want to see the end of self-serving, dishonest and ruinous politics as practiced in the UK, perhaps we need to vote to remain in the European Union, in the hope that the European Parliament might one day legislate to outlaw at least some of the worst excesses, and make it possible to criminally prosecute MPs in the same way as one might any other common or garden snake oil salesman.

David Curran
Feltham

This month's vote is about far more than our relationship with Europe: a Brexit will usher into power neo-liberal ideologues who will shape the domestic policy choices we make on everything from the NHS to industrial strategy.

Those now being wilfully misled by Vote Leave into believing the EU is the source of every national dysfunction may be surprised to hear that their chief economist, Professor Patrick Minford, advocates the unilateral removal of tariff barriers by the UK if we withdraw. Is that what the steel workers of Port Talbot and Scunthorpe want?

Dominic Brett
London, NW3

Has it not occurred to David Cameron and George Osborne that their seemingly interminable programme of austerity has helped to inflate the immigration issue in the referendum to become one that is helpfully setting the agenda for the Leave campaign. Cuts to both benefits and public services have supported the perception of the negative effects of EU migration.

Patrick Newman
Stevenage

Peter Cresswell’s letter assumes that if we vote to leave it will be more or less business as usual, only more lucrative. This massively underestimates the likely destabilising consequences of Brexit both economically and politically.

Using his own figures on the net cost of our membership, I calculate that the daily cost to me as an individual is less than 25p per day, i.e. significantly less than the cost of one cup of coffee per week.

I clearly see the EU as a more benign institution than he does, but I am convinced that it would be a reckless gamble to put jobs, mortgages and national security at risk for such a paltry and notional gain. As someone once sang, “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone”.

John Butterworth
Penzance

The “public don't know what Labour stands for on the EU, Harriet Harman says” (Independent, June 6). Nor do they know what the party stands for in respect of anything else; not since the days of Blair and New Labour.

Robert Bottamley
Hedon, East Yorkshire

Chilcot timing raises eyebrows

We have known for some time that the EU referendum would take place on June 23. The Chilcot report is to be published – finally – on July 6. Leave or stay, the outcome of the referendum will still overshadow this report, especially if we exit and sudden social change takes place.

Given the political machinations and stories, for example, “leaked” in advance – including that Alastair Campbell will get off lightly – one can't help but wonder if as much “dodgy dealing” has taken place with regard to its publication date as took place with dossiers, and so forth?

Richard Kimble
Hawksworth

Parenting is the ultimate responsibility

Hurrah, Grace Dent, for your article on parenting. Like you, my choice was to remain childless. Children are hard work and on loan until they are 16. If they like the job you have done, they may hang around. That said, I am pleased others reproduce as I will need doctors and nurses as I get older.

What I would appreciate is more people understanding the responsibilities that go with being a parent. Us humans are equivalent of bindweed in the animal world. Parents should expect to be the first level of control, support and love over their offspring, for life.

Joan Cooper
Address withheld

Sex education is being sidelined

Among many other issues that the forced academisation of schools will throw up – including increased exclusions, patchy provision for the inclusion of children with special educational needs and a narrowing curriculum to reach ever more stringent test targets – little has been made of the government quietly dropping compulsory sex and relationship education (SRE) as a requirement for academies and free schools.

Currently, all schools under local authority care must provide SRE as part of their curriculum. This will not be the case if (surely when, if Nicky Morgan has her way) a school becomes an academy.

This poses serious safeguarding and social health concerns. Schools have long been places that give children and young people access to factual and impartial information about their own bodies, and their rights and responsibilities in caring for their own sexual health. Never have our children had more access to sexually explicit content, due to the proliferation of digital media, yet this government is willing to take a huge step back from providing a counter balance to such misleading and potentially dangerous online material.

With schools facing increasing pressure to “raise standards” in core subjects, will academies really see a non-compulsory aspect of children’s education as important? And how will this short-sighted policy impact long term on the rate of teenage pregnancies, increasing STD infection rates and the potential missed opportunities for children to speak out about sexual abuse or exploitation outside the school gates?

This is a ticking time bomb for our already depleted NHS, social care services and justice system, and another example of the woefully ill-thought-out concept of the academy model. Our children deserve more than to be simply data points on an academy balance sheet.

Jo Hadfield
Leeds

Drug laws fall short

What a sensible piece by Amanda Feilding. Banning things just does not work. How much better to begin to regulate some of the least harmful drugs, especially those that are much less dangerous than alcohol or tobacco.

In the meantime, anyone who wants to test their drugs should be able to openly and without danger from the law. There must be an end to an immoral legal system that, instead of protecting our children, kills them for being disobedient.

Hope Humphreys
Taunton

Ice caps are melting — but has a new ice age already begun?

Professor Peter Wadhams has made the prediction that the Arctic Sea Ice could disappear this summer. This might have carried more weight if he hadn't made the same prediction last year. I'm afraid he's beginning to sound like the annual predictions of “the worst winter” and the “hottest summer for 100 years”.

However, I do agree with the professor that this year will set a new record. I suggested earlier that the ice edge in the eastern Arctic could retreat as far as the Pole, but there is too much old ice around for a total melt.

I used to produce Arctic ice charts for the Met Office in the late 1960s and early 1970s and on retirement, a dozen years ago, I took a renewed interest in the area. I was shocked to see how much the area of ice had declined and, shortly afterwards, estimated that the Arctic would become ice-free by the summer of 2020.

At this time, the official IPCC view was that this would not happen until the end of the century. More than a decade later, I still haven't changed my view on this.

One worry about this loss of ice is that, in the 1950s, it was thought that once the ice melted in summer, it might not be able to return in the following winter due to turbulent mixing of the ocean and loss of the surface fresh-water layer. This would be a problem if another theory from that era were correct, in saying that increased moisture from the ocean could produce heavy snowfalls over northern Russia and Canada in winter and increased cloud cover in summer, thus triggering a new Ice Age.

This fear of a potential Ice Age persuaded the US military not to proceed with experiments to melt the ice artificially in order to gain access to the Arctic for their naval fleet. As I vaguely recall (it was about 45 years ago that I first read about this), the most effective method that scientists came up with was to seed the Arctic Ice with a form of lichen that would absorb sunlight and so melt the ice.

The advantage of this method over others was that, in the event of a snowfall whitening the ice, the lichen would grow through it and so lower the albedo again.

Those theories from the 1950s have since been dismissed; I hope that decision was correct.

Graham P Davis
Bracknell

Put an end to ‘frankenscience’

Creating human-animal hybrids is bad for people and worse for animals. To create animals containing human material, animal mothers undergo invasive procedures to harvest their eggs and implant embryos. These animals have exactly the same capacity to feel pain and to suffer as any other animal, including humans.

To understand more about human development and human diseases, the world's most forward-thinking scientists are developing and using methods that supersede the crude use of animals and are actually relevant to human health. These modern methods include sophisticated tests using human cells and tissues and innovative biotechnology such as organs-on-a-chip, which replicate human physiology, diseases and drug responses more accurately than experiments on animals do.

With more investment and use of humane, cutting-edge technology, we'll have much better science than the monstrous “frankenscience” of creating human-animal hybrids.

Dr Julia Baines
Science policy adviser to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
London, N1

Savage terrorists do not represent Islam

We have long warned about the spectre of an imminent terrorist attack in Jordan and called upon the international community to step up efforts to help the Hashemite kingdom remaining a citadel of freedom, justice, religious harmony and peaceful coexistence in times of peril.

The terrorist attack that targeted an intelligence services installation in Amman on the first day of Ramadan speaks volumes about the unspeakable savagery of terrorists. They do not represent our beautiful faith that enjoins its adherents to espouse compassion and mercy and eschew violence. They do not have any respect for the sanctity of the holy month.

This, once again, is a vivid reminder that failure is not an option. If terrorists win, a world of mayhem and destruction would unravel, leaving us absolutely shattered for a long time to come.

Dr Munjed Farid Al Qutob
London