Sadiq Khan, protesting against Donald Trump’s UK visit is hypocritical – the left is corrupt too

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Sadiq Khan is blatantly playing politics by opposing the state visit of president Trump.

He accuses Republican Trump of an appalling attitude towards women and of supporting white-supremacist antisemites. However, he ignores the fact that past Democrat presidents from Labour’s US sister party had a significantly worse record towards the female gender.

JFK’s backroom staff allegedly provided a constant stream of young women for his personal gratification during his short tenure and Bill Clinton’s antics with Monica Lewinsky are legendary.

Moreover, given the universal condemnation by Jewish leaders about antisemitism in the Labour Party, the London mayor would do well to keep quiet.

Jim Sokol
Minehead, Somerset

Trump and Nazi Germany

As we prepare to welcome President Trump and commemorate the sacrifices of 75 years ago, we should also remember that Hitler’s message in the preceding 20 years was essentially “we want our country back”, and his ambition? To make Germany “great” again.

Richard Greenwood
Bewdley, Worcestershire​

Leader of the free world?

Again, you refer to president Trump as “the leader of the free world”. “The free world” is an outmoded and meaningless expression.

There are varying degrees of freedom, or lack thereof, throughout the world. More importantly, Donald Trump is the president of the United States, and nothing more – thankfully.

Anthony Slack
Rochdale, Greater Manchester

Tory leadership race

The frontrunners in the Tory leadership election are intent on pushing through a no-deal Brexit. Unless parliament is allowed to exert its constitutional authority, or the views of the people are sought in a second referendum, they will have their way.

These despots are determined to thwart parliament and any other democratic process, whilst loudly proclaiming that they “respect the will of the people”. Where else do you hear such language other than from the mouths of dictators the world over?

Andrew McLauchlin
Stratford upon Avon

Rewilding is long overdue

In uplands all over the UK there are many hundreds of thousands of hectares of treeless desolation – largely human-made landscapes. That MPs are to “debate return of land to its natural habitat” could mark the start of something very big indeed – and necessary and desirable.

Any government initiative needs to include measures that provide irresistible incentives to the owners of the land to change their management of it – the offsetting of tax against agreed programmes of planting and maintenance for example.

Near continuous deciduous tree-cover is a multi-century endeavour that would benefit the whole nation yet it is uncontentious, relatively inexpensive and easy to undertake.

This activity does not have to be the preserve of the conspicuously over-resourced – regular citizens can join in but the Lib Dems will need to tailor their land-tax plans so as not to harm the project.

Steve Ford
Haydon Bridge, Northumberland​

HS2, back to the future?

Jon Stone’s piece suggests that the present problem with the railways is that they carry a mix of express intercity trains and stopping local and commuter services on one set of tracks because they were built in Victorian times.

However, the reason we have this mix nowadays is largely due to the Beeching Report.

As the railways developed in the 19th century, mainlines and local lines were largely kept separate to avoid fast through-traffic being delayed by slower local traffic.

The “ghosts” of this can still be seen in some mainlines’ through-stations where the tracks for non-stopping trains ran.

Elsewhere on the system, the “ghosts” are of the local tracks, taken up as a result of Beeching. So in some ways, HS2 is going back to the future.

Gordon Whitehead
Scarborough, North Yorkshire