We need stability from our leaders – not grand visions

In reply to Adam Forrest’s piece (Here’s what Keir Starmer really means by ‘take back control’, Voices, Friday) on the need for a big vision from the Labour leader: no, no, no!

We need to fix the foundations before putting up another grand, impossible illusion. No more “oven-ready” rubbish, no more mathematics to 18, no more stopping immigration when our whole care system relies on foreign workers, no more Trussonomic ruination.

Just stop!

We need to reinvigorate our public services across the board. They are what provide security, support and certainty in our society. The NHS keeps us healthy to do our work, councils support the proper running of our local services, police and border forces provide security in our country and at our borders.

Just following the dead end of chucking cash at contractors rather than employing real folk in real posts leads to situations like the Manston debacle, where a profit-driven contractor and a cruel government combined to let human beings fall into illness and despair.

And as for offshoring the problem to Rwanda, dear lord, just how low will we stoop?

When, and only when, we have a proper plan in place to do this, and when, and only when, we accept that "leaving it to the market" will only make a few individuals richer, but the country

as a whole poorer – only then can we afford, sustain and deliver big visions.

As is the case with any construction: foundation, walls, and then roof.

John Sinclair Pocklington

Leave means leave

In trying to justify his plans for restricting strikes, Rishi Sunak says they have similar rules in France, Germany and Italy. Funny that, considering the government’s condemnation of everything European, and its claim we should not be aligning ourselves with them.

Geoff Forward Stirling

Why can’t they see the obvious?

I’d always understood the Conservatives to be the party espousing market forces, and the laws of supply and demand. So why can’t they see that the way to address the vacancies in the NHS and adult social care – a staggering 9.7 per cent and 9.2 per cent respectively (and rising) – is to pay more, and just as importantly, to improve conditions?

Because they are morally bankrupt, and only quote market forces when it suits them, that’s why. Just as they only spout One Nation Toryism if it might further their cause.

Hopefully our nation has finally seen through the cynicism, and not a moment too soon.

Tim Sidaway Hertfordshire

Taken to school

Liam James and Kate Devlin’s report on the recent NHS crisis talks appears to confirm that Downing Street is finally

responding to the current strike situation.

It was perhaps appropriate that Rishi Sunak’s announcement that he will hold the “grown-up, honest” talks that the unions have been requesting for weeks in a school in Battersea. The head boy and his prefects have at last heard the bell, decided to come in from the playground, and are now attending class.

The accumulated problems they seek to resolve have arisen as a direct result of the inadequate performance of Tory governments over many years, and we know to our cost that they are not confined solely to the NHS. Long-term improvement in NHS services is clearly desirable, but the problems of serious and immediate consequence are the actual and threatened strikes across the service. The priority in action is clear.

Let us hope that they learn the lessons on offer from the meeting of “best minds”, and can achieve the result the country so urgently needs. They are unlikely to do so unless current wage demands, a major driver of strike action, are on the agenda.

If they are not, the meeting could turn out to be just another talking shop; little more than a political wheeze, and another Tory can kicked down the road.

David Nelmes Newport

Get your priorities straight, Davina

Davina McCall says that the thing that makes her most angry about society is “cancel culture”. That she can put this – largely mythological – concern ahead of food banks, the housing and energy crisis, social care and NHS meltdown, violence against women, and so on, indicates how ridiculously out of touch our governing elite and its media cheerleaders have become.

Andrew Cameron Helstone Water

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