The Conservatives are being punished for treating their core voters with contempt

SIR – Rishi Sunak is imploring voters not to put Labour in power by switching to Reform UK, following the Conservatives’ Kingswood and Wellingborough by-election losses (report, telegraph.co.uk, February 16).

This is further confirmation – if any were needed – of the contempt with which Mr Sunak and his allies view the electorate.

It is not our fault that Labour will take power: it is his and his colleagues’ fault for running this country into the ground, taxing us to the gills, ploughing vast sums into ruinous net-zero plans and allowing apparently unchecked migration.

Voters are not fickle. They simply do not want the current policies of the Conservative Party. Andrew Pearce London SE3

SIR – Conservative MPs can hardly be surprised by the by-election results.

As a devout Tory all my adult life, I will not vote again for a split and warring party, many of whose members are publicly railing against Rishi Sunak as opposed to lending him their undivided support. Anthony Haslam Farnham, Surrey

SIR – Our basically two-party, first-pastthe-post system is sadly predictable. Huge majorities don’t keep a government on its toes.

The Conservatives were handed a majority of 80 but have managed their own decline through disloyalty and in-fighting.

Perhaps what we need is a wider variety of credible parties – ones we feel it is worth getting up and going out to vote for. Norma Murray Ulverston, Cumbria

SIR – Reform UK is now polling and receiving double-digit percentages of the vote.

When, after five years of painful Labour policies, the 2029 general election comes round, don’t be surprised if this party forms a government – or at the very least enters into a coalition.

Christopher Hunt

Swanley, Kent

SIR – Am I the only one to look at the low turnouts of both by-elections and suspect that a huge Labour majority at the next general election may not be a foregone conclusion?

The 60 per cent of people who did not take part may have decided that, at this stage in an election year, it was simply not a particularly important vote. Carolyne Trew

North Boarhunt, Hampshire