Merkel v Rees-mogg

sir – A few months ago, Angela Merkel voted (openly) against gay marriage in the German referendum. This caused barely a flutter in Germany.

Has Yvette Cooper (“Britain always keeps religion out of politics,” Fraser Nelson, Comment, September 8) already written to Mrs Merkel (and the main German newspapers) explaining why she should stand down as leader of her party and of her nation?

I did not hear the BBC report on Mrs Merkel’s vote, yet Tim Farron was set up, then carved up and fed to the social-media trolls.

Mr Rees-mogg is now in the Bbc-guided “point and laugh” cross-hairs. This leads me to ask whether Germans are now more tolerant than the British. Stephen Connor

Warrington, Cheshire

sir – Bigot was one of those “irregular verbs” beloved of Bernard Woolley in Yes, Prime Minister – “I have strong principles. You are prejudiced. He is a bigot.”

If we immediately decide, as too often seems to happen, that disagreeing with our strong principles makes someone a bigot, what does that make us? Janet Thomas

Harrogate, North Yorkshire

sir – Jacob Rees-mogg is not a bigot. Unlike so many politicians, of all parties, he says exactly what he believes. I don’t agree with his views on abortion or same-sex marriage but I find it refreshing to listen to a man who speaks honestly, and who will not “change his mind” in order to amass votes. Mary Ross

Penketh, Cheshire

sir – Jacob Rees-mogg does not need the authority of the Catholic Church to condemn abortion. If he holds that all individual human beings have a fundamental right to life he should ask his opponents which of those three characteristics are lacking in the foetus.

Quentin de la Bedoyere

London SW19