It won’t just be Tory voters who express their despair at the general election
SIR – I read with interest your interview with the avuncular, mediafriendly Sir John Curtice (February 18) and I note the evident certitude of his prognostications.
However, venerating academics and pollsters as modern Nostradamuses is a grave mistake. Their groupthinking errors ahead of the 2016 referendum and various elections clearly misled politicians and media commentators.
Sixty-two per cent of voters in Thursday’s by-elections didn’t bother to vote. I submit that this was mostly not due to idleness, but rather a simmering and widespread sense of betrayal. There is scarcely a voter in the country who hasn’t felt betrayed by our Government or Parliament at some point in the past decade, whether Leaver or Remainer, Labour or Conservative, or Irish, English or Scottish. Trust in politicians has completely gone.
The next general election will be dominated by those few who have clean hands in these betrayals and, I suspect, the results will confound the polling industry – again.
Keith Phair
Felixstowe, Suffolk
SIR – It’s reasonable and logical that there is a law that says that union strike ballots are only valid if 50 per cent of members turn out to vote. Why then is it acceptable to allow by-election results to stand when the turnout is only 37 and 38 per cent, with the winning candidate approved by a small proportion of the electorate?
Paul Webster
Dyserth, Denbighshire
SIR – Judging from Rishi Sunak’s flabby “steady as you go” response to the recent by-elections (“Our Conservative family must come together to defeat Labour”, Commentary, February 17), neither he nor the Conservative leadership understands what has happened. In 2016 and again, emphatically, in 2019 they were given clear instructions. He and they have ignored those instructions and will suffer accordingly.
John Neimer
Stoborough, Dorset
SIR – We didn’t leave the Conservative Party; it left us.
Sue Beale
Maidenhead, Berkshire
SIR – I was glad when Sir Keir Starmer became Labour leader, but have become totally disillusioned by his lack of decision and increasingly frequent U-turns, making me fearful should Labour win a general election in these intensely worrying times.
Despite his many talents, I dislike Rishi Sunak’s apparent lack of empathy and inability to understand the despair and anxieties of the “man in the street”. What should I do, knowing full well the importance of not wasting the vote granted to me?
Lutena Yates