Obscuring issues

Joyce Mcmillan is absolute - ly correct in her analysis of the Trump/ Johnson pop ulist project( Scottish Perspective ,28 August) which aims to obfuscate the real issues affecting the nation by using diversionary tactics.

It is clear that Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings have learned from Donald Trump that if a serious problem occurs, just keep batting it away until it disappears while throwing a particularly emotive issue into the mix to distract.

The most worrying element of this approach, however, is that in both the UK and US there are enough people around who are happy to go along with it.

Donald Trump can do or say anything ludicrous, but as long as his supporters believe he is going to build a wall, stop immigration, support the gun lobby and pander to the evangelical Right, everything is just fine.

In the UK so long as Johnson is taking us out of Europe, blaming the EU for a lack of progress and highlighting the fear of illegal immigration then the fact that he is rarely seen within the corridors of power, his government’s handling of the Covid crisis has been shamb olic, his henchmen can blithely break the Covid rules, his ministers can

perform incompetently and he can abuse the honours system by chucking baubles to his friends and family all become irrelevant.

Johnson and Trump have created political systems that are not only superficial but also corrupt and are purely about keeping them in power. Sadly, too many people are happy to turn a blind eye.

D. MITCHELL Coates Place, Edinburgh