Yet another election; yet more promises to put things right, to make everything better; yet more politicians telling us that they are listening and will enact our concerns and needs; yet more excuses and denials about broken promises and things not done; yet more politicians telling us that they are totally right and the other lot are totally wrong. Who to believe? Most of us know the country is broken. All of us know, depending on our political persuasion, who is to blame – it’s the other lot.
Yet it’s not that simple. Rory Stewart almost put his finger on it in describing that he left parliament after having five ministerial posts in four years and being unable to complete his job in any of them (I’d like to say Johnson and Brexit made me quit politics. But they were symptoms of the problem, not the cause, 3 June).
He is not alone: during the past 14 years we have had five prime ministers, seven chancellors of the exchequer, eight foreign secretaries, eight home secretaries and countless other senior and junior ministers. How could any of them have the time to do a proper job? Our broken country illustrates that none of them have been able to see their briefs through. This experience has shown us that the once proud “natural party of government” is no longer capable of actually governing. One can only hope that Keir Starmer’s desire to change this country includes giving ministers time to do their jobs, as well as the stability that all competent governments need.
John Robinson
Lichfield
One can sympathise to some extent with Rory Stewart’s depiction of the complexity of juggling roles as a government minister, MP, parliamentarian and parent. If even a beneficiary of the splendid advantages he enjoyed was unable to find a way through this thicket, perhaps the system in which he flourished and then floundered does need fixing.
In the meantime, the core of Stewart’s northern constituency has now been incorporated into the new Penrith and Solway, and I doubt that he would be greatly enamoured of his erstwhile party’s current candidate here, a man who, notably, stood as the Ukip candidate for Workington in 2015.
As a member of the constituency Labour party, I am more than just hoping that the people of Penrith will awake on 5 July to find that they have a non-Tory MP for the first time in almost 75 years. Our task is made harder by the cynicism and dismay expressed on the doorstep by many of Stewart’s former constituents, who have lost whatever faith they had in politicians and for whom Stewart doesn’t quite manage to conceal his mild disdain.
Ian Smith
Loweswater, Cumbria
At the recent Hay festival, I listened to Rory Stewart defining his Toryism as respect for the monarchy and a love of dry‑stone walls in Cumbria. What he neglected to say was that dry‑stone walls were the result of the 18th‑ and 19th-century enclosure of common land, in effect a privatisation of the landscape that Margaret Thatcher would have admired. This forced landless labour to move away, many to the growing cities, where they were exploited by slum landlords and factory owners. No wonder Mr Stewart and his friends like dry-stone walls. They are fossilised remnants of class struggle.
Prof emeritus Peter J Atkins
Durham
I remember being disappointed when Rory Stewart joined the Tories. There always seemed to be more about him than that.
Diana Morgan
Chichester