Conservative voters will not forgive or forget how they were betrayed

Sir – In his article (“The unbreakable Tory alliance between Court and Country is finally shattering”, Comment, November 18) Robert Tombs writes: “What is fatal to a party is not failure, but a sense of betrayal.”

This precisely explains why I shall not be voting Conservative at the next election. My vote has been taken for granted. It seems that successive Conservative prime ministers have believed that all they needed to do was to pay lip service to the opinions of their natural supporters, without taking any corresponding action.

Thomas Hamilton-jones

Monmouth

Sir – Abandoned, bewildered and betrayed is how many of those who voted Conservative feel. The party has wasted a huge opportunity in the so-called Red Wall region of the country. If politicians ignore the people, the people will exact revenge.

Cliff Peers

Chester-le-street, Co Durham

Sir – Charles Russam (Letters, November 19) comments on what a shame it is that the Government had no one clever or diligent enough to have reached, some months earlier, the same conclusion as the President of the Supreme Court on the former home secretary Suella Braverman’s Rwanda scheme.

In the same edition, you report that civil servants will be allowed to work abroad for two weeks of the year while visiting friends and family, rather than having to take annual leave.

Surely this standard of governance provides the explanation.

Jonathan Speakman-brown

Orpington, Kent

Sir – Rwanda was picked by Suella Braverman as a trustworthy, honest and moral destination for illegal immigrants. So it will presumably be only too pleased to return the £140 million if the plan comes to naught.

Timothy James

Courteenhall, Northamptonshire

Sir – Effective foreign policy and meaningful international relationships take years to build up and bed in. It is now almost certain that within a year or so the Conservatives and the Foreign Secretary, Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton, will be booted out by the electorate. Lord Cameron must be well aware of this and – more importantly – so are all his muchvaunted contacts.

What will substantially outlast Lord Cameron’s time in office is the life peerage bestowed on a former prime minister who had not even secured a knighthood.

John Bath

Clevedon, Somerset

Sir – For me, the most illustrious resident of Chipping Norton will always be that marvellous actor Ronnie Barker. He ran an antiques shop in the town for several years after his retirement.

Alun Harvey

Groningen, Netherlands