Pick of the week’s correspondence

Tories are too tentative To The Times

A century ago Tory MPs got rid of their coalition prime minister, David Lloyd George, and their own party leader, Austen Chamberlain, within an hour at a meeting in the Carlton Club. The party must rediscover the capacity to settle changes of leadership briskly when the need arises. This has not happened since November 1990, when overwhelming pressure was brought to bear on Margaret Thatcher by her most senior colleagues.

Monday’s vote brings into focus once again the faulty processes by which Tory leaders are chosen. The final decision ought to rest with MPs, as it did until 2001, when an ever-shrinking party membership was given the right to select the leader.

The party at large has longestablished channels through which to make its views known. A tight timetable should be laid down for successive ballots by MPs, who after all are used to votes in quick succession in the Commons. Sir Graham Brady must revise the rules.

Lord Lexden, Conservative Party historian

A man without a mission To The Daily Telegraph

It’s hardly surprising that so many people think that the Conservatives have lost their way when they are led by a man who achieved everything he’d ever wanted the moment that he became prime minister. John Stewart, Terrick, Buckinghamshire

I’ll soon be back, doctor To The Times

When I started as a GP, patients saw their family doctor on average three times a year. When I retired, this had risen to five. Now it is on average eight times a year. Yet there are now about 2,000 fewer full-time equivalent GPs than there were six years ago.

So something significant has changed about what the public wants from their GPs. The Government seems to have no strategy to manage this demand, other than to insist that GPs work extra hours, thus ensuring more burnout, early retirement and a reduced and demoralised workforce. What level of dysfunction does the NHS have to reach before those that manage it acknowledge that something is seriously wrong?

Dr Tim Howard, ret’d GP, Wimborne, Dorset

Not-so-hidden racism To The Guardian

The leaked Home Office document detailing the inherent racism of British immigration policy from 1950 to 1981 is shameful. However, it will surprise no one familiar with postwar immigration policy. There is, for example, at least one surprisingly explicit admission of racism that has been in the public domain for more than 50 years.

Race Without Rancour

(1968), an analysis by the Tory MP and journalist William Deedes, talks candidly of the coded message behind the Tories’ 1962 Commonwealth Immigrants Act: “The bill’s real purpose was to restrict the influx of coloured immigrants. We were reluctant to say as much openly. So restrictions were applied to coloured and white citizens in all Commonwealth countries – though everybody recognised that immigration from Canada, Australia and New Zealand formed no part of the problem.” Paul McGilchrist, Colchester

Putin only bows to power To the Financial Times

Gideon Rachman suggests that there will only be a prospect of peace talks between Russia and Ukraine when Vladimir Putin’s troops run out of equipment and his government runs out of money. This is fanciful thinking. Russia, like the Soviet Union in the Second World War, has inexhaustible supplies of people who can endure (or be forced to endure) terrible hardships without recourse to antiwar demonstrations.

However, Russia and the USSR have always backed off from military confrontation when faced with the fact that the US, Nato or the West would be willing to fight.

Now the West declares openly it will not risk war with Russia over its invasion of a democratic sovereign state. Why would Putin agree to anything short of victory on his own terms when the West is not prepared to risk anything other than price rises and the sending of materiel?

John Spencer-Churchill, London

Labour’s precious asset To The Times

Jacob Rees-Mogg is right when he says Boris Johnson is “an electoral asset”. My only question is – for which party? Gordon Lethbridge, Sherborne, Dorset

An unlikely couple To the Financial Times

In the video beamed to the crowd at the jubilee concert, the irony of ironies is that the Queen should be entertaining England’s most famous illegal immigrant – Paddington Bear. Helen Lucas, Chichester

Men we can ridicule To The Times

The prevalence of mixed-race and gay couples in TV adverts is a small price to pay to normalise what until relatively recently was widely viewed as abnormal. Perhaps we can also begin to address the fact that white middle-aged men are often presented as overweight, bumbling fools. There must be some slim and cool middleaged male actors somewhere. Steve Albon, Stratford-uponAvon, Warwickshire