It's not just the 'dementia tax' that's turning the voters off Theresa May

The harsh Tory proposals on care for the elderly must certainly have contributed to their drop in the polls. But there is another significant factor – May’s declared support for the cruel practice of hunting, and her intention to try and re-legitimise the horrible sport.

In contrast John McDonnell, the Shadow Chancellor, said about the hunting ban on a Labour Party animal welfare film a few days ago: “We thought then that the law would be tight enough. We now know it isn’t. So what we need to do now is to come back to Parliament, explore the detail of the legislation again and make sure one, that we get the legislation right, but also there’s resources available to make sure of enforcement of that legislation.”

Labour would also stop the badger cull. Whether politicians really grasp it or not, these things really matter to many, many people.

Penny Little
Great Haseley

Theresa May’s U-turn isn’t very strong and stable

A mere four days after introducing her disgusting “dementia tax” as the centrepiece of the Tory manifesto and just a day after Damien Green, her Work and Pension Secretary, insisted on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show that the Tories “wouldn't look again” at the policy, Theresa May has been forced to U-turn on it.

Not very “strong and stable”, is it?

Sasha Simic
London

As one of the “rich” (not filthy rich, but comfortably-off) retired generation, I was quite in favour of Theresa May’s plan to have people pay for their care down to their last £100,000, provided that provision were made so that payment could be deferred and no resident dependents or co-habitants would be evicted. Inheritance is one of the ways of ensuring that the rich get richer and the poor remain poor. This plan seemed to me a way of effecting its reduction. There would still remain the problem of inheritance by the obscenely wealthy, but this would have been a small step in the right direction.

But it did seem rather out of character for the Tories to attempt redistribution of wealth. Far more likely that it was just a money-grubbing exercise. And so it has proved to be. As soon as the polls showed that it was unpopular with voters, the vicar’s daughter saw the light and pedalled backwards. Obviously, being “strong and stable” is the plan, but only as long as it gets votes. And getting votes is the objective, first and last.

Clearly there were people who were turned against her by the thought of a dwindling of their family coffers. Can we hope that at least some of them will be repelled by her lack of principle and not play into her hands by returning to the Conservative fold after her change of mind?

Susan Alexander
Frampton Cotterell

Brexit will impact care costs

Anyone who is complacent about Theresa May’s plan for the value of their home being used to pay the costs of their care in later life (or whatever still remains of the strong, stable one’s policy by this afternoon) might want to keep a careful eye, post-Brexit, on the escalating costs of that care in comparison to the tumbling value of the pound.

Julian Self
Milton Keynes

Abolish student loans for the many, not the few

If future student loans are to be abolished, as Labour suggests, and current debts are to be written off, as the Greens propose, what will those parties do for the many people like our daughter, who has worked hard to pay off all her student loan debt. Is that money to be refunded to her, which seems only fair, and if not, why not?

Kim Thonger
Rushden

Student loans haven’t helped the Scots so why would they help us?

Labour's decision to bring forward their tuition fees pledge so current students benefit too shows that this is not about making the higher education system better, but more a plot to just get more votes.

As a 17-year-old who would like to go to university next year, I think the idea of having tuition fees is good, because it makes people like me value the course they are applying for: when it’s your own money, you begin to take things a lot more seriously.

And as we have seen in Scotland, this is not even a policy which will attract children from poorer backgrounds anyway.

Lewis Chinchen
Sheffield

Young people need to get out and vote

It is no good young people blaming us pensioners for the referendum result (and I have yet to meet anybody from my peer group who voted for Brexit).

They have to make the effort to go to the polls and out-vote the older generation, who are unlikely to see the long term consequences of any decisions made next month.

Gillian Cook
Market Harborough