Let Rishi Sunak’s remarkable journey be a lesson to us all

Letters to the editor: our readers share their views. Please send your letters to letters@independent.co.uk

It’s not about where you come from (REUTERS)

Rishi Sunak’s remarkable journey is a testament that it’s not about where you come from, but about where you go and how you get there.

If a multimillionaire former hedge fund manager can get to be Britain’s prime minister without the public getting to vote, then all of us can live in hope.

Bambos Charalambous

Manchester

A terrible advert for the Tory party

What a terrible advert for the Tory party that Liz Truss could not bring herself to apologise to the British people for making our lives tougher than is necessary. She has left a damning legacy of Tory incompetence and mismanagement for others to clear up and the public to weather the storm.

The arrogance she displayed in her closing speech is indicative of Tory party. They seem to think that Britain is their own fiefdom where they are able to operate in a vacuum where no account should be taken of what the electorate require. They truly believe that they are doing the best for the British people, when in reality they have dragged our reputation through the international gutter making us the laughing stock of the world. Just have a look at President Biden yesterday, when he smirked while mispronouncing Rishi Sunak’s name. He obviously thinks we are a second-rate nation led by an equally second-rate government.

Johnson, Truss and the Conservative Party have, since Brexit, reduced this country’s standard of living, opportunities and future to nothing. We have been let down by successive Tory inept governments who seemed to praise themselves illogically for fixing problems that they have caused.

The government must stop their arrogant display as they have achieved very little in the past 12 years that has actually benefitted the British people. Passing laws, promising money and change does not achieve aims, action to alleviate hardship is needed. Conservative in-fighting, changes of PMs, inappropriate and inept ministers have become the norm which has stopped any benefits for the British people.

The Conservative Party has become a self-congratulatory, self-serving club which lacks the talent and ability to govern. So, obviously, a general election is absolutely necessary to steady this rudderless, floundering ship.

Keith Poole

Basingstoke

New PM, same old story

A new PM at No 10 but it’s the same old story. Self interest and socially damaging policies in another hat. The new incumbent’s CV in government tells us so.

Surely the public have at long last correctly concluded that the Tory party is a vehicle for the interests of a rich minority, some of them obscenely so? They have carried the country on a journey of national damage and international diminution that has continued freewheeling downhill without a comfort break since May 2010.

The Tory party’s acts of social vandalism over their 12 years in power, serving the interests of both themselves and the wealthy, have enjoyed their peaks. We have the disaster of Brexit – a failed attempt by Cameron to protect his party from the forces of Farage – which gains height by the day; and most recently the Kwasi Kwarteng “fiscal event”, the latest act of self-harm and one of most immediate impact.

The former is an open wound that left unattended bleeds on; Sunak is scrambling to find sticking plasters to staunch the haemorrhaging of the later. There will be more pain and we know it is the public who will feel it.

In Rishi Sunak, we have another Tory bus driver with the usual credentials carrying a long-suffering public to a destination that is not where we need to go. It is time for a change of route and a driver at the wheel from a different provider.

David Nelmes

Caerleon, Newport

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Is this really the cabinet we need – or deserve?

Despite claiming continuity of mandate (without an election) while also insisting he’s new and shiny, “PM” Sunak has kept the cruel, the craven, the cretinous and the Hunt in his cabinet.

Humanitarians shuddered when we listened to Braverman describe her “dream” to see flights of desperate migrants being forcibly shipped to Rwanda.

Gove may have endeared himself to some online, with his nightclub shuffling, but sentient adults are appalled by his shape-shifting and opportunist toadying. And they all hold hands on the most socially, politically and economically catastrophic act of self-harm of all – Brexit.

Is this the cabinet that a country awash with foodbank dependency, personal debt, child poverty and homelessness plus corroded international reputation needs?

Amanda Baker

Edinburgh

Power corrupts

“There are people with power. There are people who own the country. And they’re not going to let the country get out of control” (Noam Chomsky speaking to a college student in the documentary, Manufacturing Consent).

That’s why the world is presented in a certain way to make us believe we are in charge as, if we thought different, we may try to change things; because why shouldn’t we have the same say in things as everybody else? Why is it that someone mega-wealthy or born within a certain bloodline can decide things to a greater extent than other much poorer people?

The illusion presented to us is that those in power have the experience and/or the knowledge which gives them the right. Not so. It’s the same the world over. Dictatorships just wield power in a different way.

Power when challenged will protect itself, and no form of retaliation is ignored. “Power at all costs” would be the slogan of every state in existence if truth were told just once.

Louis Shawcross

Co. Down, N. Ireland

We’ll have another hung parliament

Keir Starmer versus Liz Truss could have resulted in a Labour overall majority, but Starmer versus Rishi Sunak will result in a hung parliament. We need to hold the balance of power, those of us who seek to strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty.

Owing nothing to either main party, we must be open to the better offer. There does, however, need to be a better offer. Not a lesser evil, which in any case the Labour Party is not.

David Lindsay, Independent parliamentary candidate for North West Durham, 2019 and 2024

Lanchester