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<strong>Letters: </strong>Since 1979, ending welfare spending has been seen as key for creating an efficient economy, writes <strong>Derrick Joad</strong>, while <strong>Janet Dubé</strong> says there was more equality in the 1970s than there is today
Jeremy Bowen writes powerfully and sensibly, as always (“The war that cannot be won”, 28 May). I only met Benjamin Netanyahu once over breakfast in Israel shortly before he became prime minister, and I took an instant dislike to him – bombastic, vain, and histrionic. As he faces serious criminal charges, the outside world must hope that Yair Lapid succeeds in building an alternative coalition government, however doubtful that looks. When I was a student in the late Fifties, many spent their vacations volunteering on a kibbutz, but no longer, as Israel has slipped from being a cause to ...
<strong>Letters: </strong>Readers reflect on the deepening divisions between the four nations
Philip Collins (The Public Square, 26 February) sees astutely beyond the old debates about Boris Johnson. Johnson, like his hero Disraeli, is a career politician with a ravenous hunger for climbing the tiered cake-stand of public life. This Prime Minister is not an ideologue on a mission like Thatcher or Corbyn. Instead, like a late-Victorian Conservative, Johnson sees himself as playing the “great parliamentary game”. The point of this game is to win and keep office. Johnson constantly reinvents himself and his policies to make sure that he does. Johnson is already the greatest vote-w...
Johnson’s brief bounce Andrew Rawnsley’s article demonstrates the short-term nature of contemporary politics (“The bad taste question about Covid that everyone in Westminster is asking”, Comment). What matters to the denizens of Westminster is less good governance than the “bluebird of spring” that will transform their poll ratings. There is no doubt that a successful vaccination programme will do this. People grateful for the vaccine will forget the policy mishaps that led up to this moment. However, this boost will be temporary, as his many other policy failures will have a nega...