Readers' letters: Rishi Sunak is best PM we never had for long enough

He didn’t deliver his NHS waiting lists pledge, or debt

reduction, but 1.7 per cent economic growth is forecast for 2025, inflation is down from 11.1 per cent in October 2022 to 1.7 per cent, and illegal immigration, down from 45,000 to around 30,000, plummeted before the election due to the Rwanda threat.

His “they’re queuing up at Calais waiting for a Labour government” put-down to Starmer in the second debate proved accurate as Channel crossings are up, and he consistently bests Starmer in Prime Minister’s Questions, leaving him floudering on Wednesday with his question on Labour's seeming reluctance to implement the Conservatives’ Foreign Influence Registration Scheme or the Freedom of Speech Act designed to preserve and promote it in academia.

No doubt he had to go, and I believe Labour have a more credible chance of tackling obesity, the benefits bill, NHS queues and two million economically inactive people, the existential threats, along with uncontrolled immigration, to the UK economy and society.

But some may wonder if the Brexit, Johnson and Truss albatrosses round his neck deprived the UK of the best Prime Minister we never had for long enough. He also bought his own suits and spectacles.

Allan Sutherland, Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire

Behind the stats

The annual rate of inflation has moderated to 1.7 per cent, dropping below the Bank of England’s 2 per cent target for the first time since April 2021. Potentially good news for hard-pressed mortgage holders if, as expected, the base rate is cut in the weeks to come. Monetarists rejoice: the inflation-induced cost-of-living crisis is finally coming to its “natural” end as per theory! Unfortunately, day-to-day reality continues to confound theory:

Firstly, average prices are now 20.3 per cent higher than when we emerged from COVID, according to the BoE – and have shown no signs of “naturally” re-adjusting downwards: the pain of this hike in everyone’s cost of living continues to be widely felt.

Moreover, the CPIH – the measure of inflation which includes owner-occupier housing costs, and preferred by the Office of National Statistics – is still running at 2.7 per cent – above the BoE’s target. And the moderation seen in this month’s inflation figure is largely accounted for by the summer price fall in items like petrol and wholesale oil. These are inherently volatile and are expected to rise again in the next months.

Also, running at around 5 per cent, wage inflation remains high in a relatively tight labour market with public sector pay outstripping the private sector: an understandable reaction as people try to protect their falling standard of living. The unfortunate consequence is that the related costs tend to be met either courtesy of the taxpayer or passed on to consumers, thereby fuelling future price inflation.

Most worryingly, the biggest losers are the most vulnerable in society whose level of benefits next year are set, according to government custom and practice, by this month’s low inflation figure. Hopefully, this Chancellor will find the moral courage and wherewithal to address this unfortunate and unfair anomaly.

Ewen Peters, Newton Mearns, East Renfrewshire

Uplifting incident

Doug Morrison (Letters, 17 October) is right about Glaswegians, without whom Scotland would be a dreary place indeed. Boarding a flight home from Lanzarote, I was unable to ascend the steps to the aircraft. Seeing my plight, three large Glaswegian lads simply picked me up and carried me aboard. They then saw to it that I had a more spacious seat, and included me in their attack on the drinks trolley. On arrival at Glasgow, they carried me off the aircraft and one offered to get my car from the car park.

Would that have happened on a flight to Edinburgh? I think not.

Malcolm Parkin, Kinross, Perth and Kinross

Israel isolateed

Bezalel Smotrich, the Israeli finance minister, has declared it to be “just and moral” to block much needed food aid to Gaza. It’s hard to think of anything approaching morality and justice inherent in such a move, whose consequence would mass starvation in Gaza where already mroe than 42,000 have died.

Meanwhile, US President Joe Biden, with no doubt a cynical eye on next month’s election and the Jewish vote, has said that Israel has no better friend than “my government”. But even Israel’s best friend is despairing of their unjust and immoral threat, giving them 30 days to rescind.

How would Israel fare without America’s now conditional support? It appears that only the US has the heft to influence Israel’s heinous actions and we can only hope that they finally lose patience with their best friend, who is fast becoming their only friend.

Ian Petrie, Edinburgh

Own goals

What hysteria concerning the appointment of Thomas Tuchel as England manager and whether he will sing the National anthem. Why wouldn’t he want God to save the King, who is mostly German anyway.

Torquil MacLeod, Drumnadrochit, Highland

Pie in the sky

October 19, 2023 was meant to be written into every Scot’s diary. Nicola Sturgeon proclaimed it would be indyref2 no ifs, not buts. Then she had to resign. One year on and the independence movement stands on the edge of an abyss. Nicola Sturgeon no longer commands the respect she once did and with the loss of Alex Salmond any revival of the cause has all but been extinguished.

The proud boast of the Nationalists that Westminster was a government Scots did not vote for is in tatters and even the once large crowds waving Saltires have become an endangered species.

Reality must be faced. Independence was a non-starter in 2014 and it is even more irrelevant now. Scotland faces big problems in coping with everyday living. Pie-in-the-sky policies have no place here any more.

Gerald Edwards, Glasgow

Proper arguments

If the Union is working for Scotland and most of the people on these islands, and warrants sustaining, why do some contributors to these pages feel the need to slur those who support Scotland’s right to self-determination as well as the need to indulge in misrepresentation of facts without appropriate context and to divert from stark failings across the United Kingdom?

In his letter of 16 October, Dave Anderson ungraciously accused the sadly departed, but fondly remembered by many, Alex Salmond, of being “very divisive” and “anti-British”. Such pejorative language, with echoes of “anti-English” claims, is generally based on a false premise that because some favour the people of Scotland being again represented by one parliament accountable only to the Scottish people that they therefore must be against another country, and by implication, against its people.

Advocating fundamental constitutional reform of the UK does not imply any sentiments either for or against the people of England or the rest of Britain, and to suggest otherwise betrays an ignorance of the many reasons millions of people have come to the realisation that “Broken Brexit Britain” is failing the people of these islands. I personally don’t agree with Gordon Brown’s view that federalism is the way forward but I don’t think that makes him anti-English (simply because Scotland would have a greater say in the overall governance of these islands).

Perhaps if Mr Anderson has any convincing arguments for sustaining the Union he could drop using derogatory terms in future letters and instead include appropriate context relative to Scotland’s social and economic condition within the increasingly undemocratic union to which he is apparently devoted?

Stan Grodynski, Longniddry, East Lothian

Gesture politics

Next time we hear of struggling council education budgets or the latest SNP income tax rises, let’s think of John Swinney as he gravely steeples his fingers and announces in a statesmanlike tone that he’s giving away £12.5 million to schools in Africa “to help some of the world’s most marginalised learners who have the same right to a quality education as anyone else” (Scotsman, 17 October).

What about the rights of marginalised learners here in Scotland, among them children in the First Minister’s own constituency?

The Scottish Government already gave away £14.5 million in foreign aid last year, money it’s not even obliged to part with because the UK already makes such payments on our behalf.

Like those fake embassies and Angus “Air Miles” Robertson’s travelling expenses, this is yet more costly, empty gesture politics, trying to pretend that separatists got their way in 2014. This latest cash giveaway is just as pointless and delusional as their childish insistence on continuing to fly the EU flag outside Holyrood.

Martin O’Gorman, Edinburgh

Mum’s the word

In her article on modern students (Scotsman, 17 October), could Dr Sara Lodge not have written “the evil prospect of a debt and compound interest ahead of them” instead of her insulting “the evil stepmother…”?

John Birkett, St Andrews, Fife

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