In accepting Priti Patel's resignation, Theresa May took the easy option

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Priti Patel (right) and Prime Minister Theresa May (PA)

Even in allowing Priti Patel to resign Theresa May shows her weakness. In accepting Patel’s resignation she took the easy option. May should have refused to accept Patel’s resignation and sacked her. It could be argued what does it matter, if she’s gone she’s gone. But May really needs to be seen asserting her authority and not allow the initiative to pass back to Patel.

Nigel Groom
Witham

Theresa May’s crisis is astronomical

I’ve been fascinatedly reading a recently published scientific paper about a star that seems to be going recurrently supernova; indeed, astronomers have found that it survived not one, but five, separate explosions. It’s been described as a “zombie star”.

How can Theresa May keep up with that?

Jeremy Redman
Catford

We can’t justify selling bombs to Saudi Arabia

UK bomb sales to Saudi Arabia have increased 500 per cent since our Saudi Arabian friends and allies started to bomb civilians in Yemen two years ago.

How many more civilians around the world can expect to be killed by British weaponry in future years as our immoral Government seeks to compensate for the economic self-harm of Brexit by selling ever more killing equipment to any government with the money to buy it?

D Maughan Brown
York

Boris Johnson has handed all of the playing cards over to Iran

If it wasn’t for the fact that a woman is facing years in an Iranian prison, the current power handed to the Iranian government by Boris Johnson would be fascinating. The Iranians are now effectively in a position to decide the make-up of the British Government, knowing as they do that they can virtually guarantee the Foreign Secretary’s resignation by giving Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe an extended sentence, or they can surely guarantee that he remains in office by ensuring that the court ignores his comments about her being a trainer of journalists.

Perhaps they will choose the latter route, thereby relishing an incompetent post-colonial Boris Johnson remaining in office so that he may continue to embarrass Britain across the globe. But whichever way, either the poor woman will suffer or Britain will. One might be tempted to ask how on earth did we get into this mess?

Colin Burke
Manchester

Focus on the meaning of the poppy, not the poppy itself

X Factor judge Nicole Scherzinger should not have been criticised on social media or embarrassed in any way for not wearing a poppy.

As one whose uncle was killed in the Battle of the Somme and whose father fought in the First World War, I have great respect for those who risked and gave up their lives in defence of our country.

I always wear a poppy on Remembrance Sunday and on 11 November, although I do not think it is necessary to wear poppies for the weeks beforehand.

Should we not all be concentrating more on working for peace in our world?

Sally Hill
Budleigh Salterton

We are very far behind, indeed

328 days after the opening of the Berlin Wall, Germany had completed reunification.

503 days after the Brexit vote, the UK doesn’t even have a coherent negotiating position.

Paula Kirby
Inverness