Saying the unsayable

SIR – Congratulations to Allister Heath (Comment, May 10) for his “unfashionable” support for President Trump in ending US participation in the Iran nuclear deal. He is right that “appeasing expansionist rogue states rarely works”. Iran is, as he says, “now the world’s number one terror state”.

His article is important because, as Kemi Badenoch MP points out in her happily adjacent article, unfashionable views are increasingly unsayable as “virtual lynch mobs … intimidate anyone who doesn’t pass the test of ‘acceptable’ comment”.

Moreover, Labour’s shocking attempt to restrict press freedom through an amendment to the Data Protection Bill was defeated by a mere nine votes in the Commons on Wednesday, but, as she says, “the enemies of free expression will no doubt return in a different form”.

William Shawcross

London W2

SIR – It is difficult to be content with the result of Wednesday’s parliamentary debate on Tom Watson’s amendments to the Data Protection Bill (“Labour attempt to curb press freedom fails”, report, May 10).

That there should be 295 elected MPS who are so ignorant and so unaware of the importance of our fundamental and hard-won rights and freedoms is deeply depressing.

Mike Kaye

Nocton, Lincolnshire

SIR – Let us not be complacent. A vote of 304 to 295 tells us that, in this country, freedom of the press is a very delicate flower that needs all the tender, loving care we can give it.

Doug Clark

Currie, Midlothian

SIR – The mentality of those MPS who sought to curb the freedom of the press in Wednesday’s debate is best understood in the words of Wilhelm von Humboldt: “The desire for domination, the insensibility to the beauty of freedom, show that a man is in love with slavery, merely not wishing to be a slave himself.”

Dr Max Gammon

London SE16