Boris Johnson becoming prime minister would be humiliating for Britain

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No doubt about it now. Boris is out and about and we see him for the bumbling, forgetful buffoon we have always known him to be. His backroom team and MP supporters must be having a collective nervous breakdown. Well serves them right. They are backing him solely for his populist appeal, hoping they can control and guide him away from car crash interviews and poisoned soundbites to further their own careers and political agendas. The parallel with Trump and the Republican Party is obvious. My God! Is this really happening in good old Blighty?!

On a brighter note, I haven’t laughed so much for ages. Please, please, please can someone get him to do a show-and-tell with his painted wine crate buses of people having a happy time. That would certainly make me happy. A do or die Brexit, Boris? Do me a favour!

David Rose
Sutton Coldfield

Boris Johnson – who is likely to be voted in as the leader of the 160,000-strong Tory party on 23 July and as a consequence will also become the unelected prime minister of 66 million people – says the chances of no-deal Brexit are “a million to one”. All very reassuring except this is the same Johnson who once opined: “My chances of being PM are about as good as the chances of finding Elvis on Mars, or my being reincarnated as an olive.”

Sasha Simic
London N16

There is no requirement for the next PM to call a general election

The idea that whoever becomes our next prime minister must call a general election to obtain a “mandate” has no basis in our constitutional history. Since 1945, seven people have become prime minister other than by winning a general election – Anthony Eden, Harold Macmillan, Alec Douglas-Home, James Callaghan, John Major, Gordon Brown and Theresa May. Of these, only two – Eden and Theresa May – called a general election when they did not need to. Another two – Douglas-Home and Major – called an election within a year, but only because parliament had run its five-year course.

The fact is that in our system we do not vote to decide who becomes prime minister. We vote for individual candidates who in the main represent parties. The leader of whichever party has or can command a parliamentary majority becomes prime minister. The proposition that a UK prime minister requires a popular mandate for legitimacy is as ill-conceived as the historical idea that an emperor of China required the Mandate of Heaven to rule.

Michael Clarke
Portishead

One-track government

In Scotland, we have a raft of crises to deal with, in particular: the attainment gap in schools, plus a general decline in school standards; health service waiting times and the unavailability of certain treatments because of staff shortages; child poverty; successive and expensive IT project failures; and a declining tax take, which means less revenue to deal with these problems. So how does the SNP Scottish government prioritise its efforts? It shelves its projected education bill and concentrates on pushing through measures to promote another referendum and “citizens’ assemblies” whose purpose is to promote separatism. This one-track government prefers fiddling with its constitutional obsession while Scotland burns.

Jill Stephenson
Edinburgh

All hail scientific progress

I knew the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing was in clear view. I clearly remember how amazed we were, and nearly everyone was glued to the TV screens: my relatives, friends, neighbours, even teachers from my school. Doubtless, there will be many events over the next month or so, some better than others. However, I was pleased to see that many moon samples are to be removed from storage and examined for the first time in decades.

Hopefully, we shall also see some displayed for the public and then enjoy reading some learned information from the scientific community. One other side benefit could well be the halting of any more people joining the ranks of the bizarre moon-landing deniers. All those years ago people welcomed advances in science and technology; whereas now we appear to be doing our utmost to find any tiny reason to denigrate all of mankind’s progress and yearn for a return to less enlightened times.

Robert Boston
Kingshill

We have a gambling crisis

In Ben Chapman’s latest piece, the chief executive of the UK’s Gambling Commission, Neil McArthur, said: “I want gambling consumers in Britain to be able to enjoy the fairest and safest gambling in the world.” Also, he has revealed in a radio interview that there are more than 23 million gamblers in the UK.

I cannot believe that over a third of the population are willingly partaking in a purported leisure activity in which they lose money. It sounds to me that the UK now has an epidemic of addiction. Gambling is certainly not fair or safe. Unscrupulous operators exploit the natural tendency of humans towards addictive behaviour to feather their own nests. Everyone is susceptible to this sort of physiological dependency, but especially children.

The government should step in for the good of all and treat this crisis as both a national mental health and social emergency.

Geoff Naylor
Winchester

This article was revised to make changes to the third letter.