Letters: The choice facing America should make British voters feel fortunate

SIR – If we in Britain are concerned about the quality of the candidates seeking to be our next prime minister, let us spare a thought for voters in the forthcoming election in the United States (“Top Democrat donors turn on Biden”, telegraph.co.uk, June 28).

Is this the best the world’s most important democracy can come up with?

Patricia Reid
Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire

SIR – During the BBC head-to-head debate in Nottingham on Wednesday, Robert Blackstock asked whether Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer were really the best options available to Britain (report, June 27).

America has a population of 333 million, and its leader needs to defend democracy against Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Kim Jong Un. Its voters will surely want to know why their present choice is between a convicted felon and a faltering, incoherent incumbent.

Stella Currie
Bramhall, Cheshire

SIR – Joe Biden’s heartbreaking performance in the US television debate showed that he is unfit to continue in office.

Any hope of his winning the presidential election is gone. But he can still save us from another Trump White House by standing aside and helping to put together a strong Democratic ticket. Such a selfless act would earn him the gratitude not only of his party but also of Ukraine and the whole free world.

Charles Simon
Leicester

SIR – It cannot have come as a surprise to Democrats that Joe Biden will be a difficult sell in the election.

He has been showing signs of decline for some time. It is sad to see this in anyone, but in a president it brings obvious wider consequences.

The Democrats have been fools to allow the situation to reach this point, since it is a gift for the Republicans and particularly a character like Donald Trump, who doesn’t hold back from attacking the weaknesses of another. Politeness isn’t in his DNA. But this is politics.

For Mr Biden’s sake – and America’s – the Democrats need to act quickly and find a candidate who will offer voters a sensible choice.

Antony Clay
Bradford

Tory pleading

SIR – There are daily entreaties to discontented Conservatives to put their grievances aside and vote Tory next week.

Why? Given that the party will be drastically reduced in any case, the only way to make the remaining MPs understand how many voters they have disappointed is to vote for Reform UK.

As Lord Frost says (Comment, June 28), the Conservative Party will have to start reinventing itself on July 5. But if it fails to truly grasp why it has alienated people, it will be history.

Rupert Godfrey
Heytesbury, Wiltshire

SIR – Millions of voters may still be undecided over which party to support. I do not blame them, but they should bear in mind that the government we end up with will not just be with us for the summer. It will be with us for five whole years.

Labour’s scarier policies are starting to spill out, spoiling the party’s attempt to seem boring but sensible. Sadly, under our present system, votes for Reform may simply mean that a Labour MP gets elected instead of a Tory. And if you find, after a few months, that you are dissatisfied with a Labour government, you won’t simply be able to get rid of it.

Dan Hartley
Solihull

SIR – Nigel Theyer (Letters, June 28) cites Lord Salisbury’s attributed remarks against change as justification for supporting Rishi Sunak.

However, Albert Einstein observed that doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is the definition of insanity.

David Miller
Chigwell, Essex

SIR – The likely rout of the Conservatives next Thursday can be traced back to MPs’ decision to get rid of a leader who had a mandate from the electorate.

After that, they curtailed the leadership bid of their constituency associations’ preferred candidate – then ditched the eventual winner and replaced her without the counsel of party members.

If they had not muscled Penny Mordaunt out of contention, Tory MPs might still have some job security.

Dr Andy Ashworth
Bo’ness, West Lothian

Housing realities

SIR – I regularly read of proposals to build between 100,000 and 200,000 houses per year.

Yet with net migration routinely exceeding 500,000, this is surely nowhere near enough.

Meanwhile, here in the South East, there are many plans for development, but they are fiercely opposed – often by people who already have a home.

I wonder how many houses would be required to truly ease the situation.

Ian Lewis
Wannock, East Sussex

SIR – Rishi Sunak’s position on housing is symptomatic of everything that’s wrong with him as Prime Minister.

He has dismissed Labour’s plan for 1.5 million new houses and instead proposed a revived Help to Buy scheme with stamp duty relief for first-time buyers, even though Tory policy to date has simply fuelled house-price inflation.

While I would like to see stamp duty removed altogether, and certainly don’t trust Sir Keir Starmer with anything (least of all encouraging housebuilding in the right way), it is a basic truth of economics that, if you increase supply, prices are kept in check.

Mr Sunak considers himself a Thatcherite, but the great lady recognised the importance of young people gaining a stake in society with their own home, and created the conditions for it to happen. Mr Sunak’s reluctance to upset his few remaining supporters makes him as unsuitable as Sir Keir for running our country.

Tim Coles
Carlton, Bedfordshire

Cash-poor banks

SIR – On Thursday I visited our local bank and asked for 100 £1 coins for petty cash purposes for a charity event I am helping to organise in the village.

The teller advised me that the bank did not have a single coin of this denomination – and, when pressed, said none would be available for the rest of the week. Instead, I had to accept other denominations.

Is the Royal Mint responding to market conditions of supply and demand and cutting back on production?

Geoff Pringle
Long Sutton, Somerset

A home education

SIR – I have the greatest respect for those parents who home-school their children (Letters, June 25).

Indeed, we have a family member who has done the job superbly for a number of years.

However, there is a caveat (and I write with 45 years of teaching experience): boys and girls need social and emotional education, as well as academic.

I do wonder how many children educated at home actually receive these vital elements.

Ian Duckworth
Billington, Lancashire

Who needs a car when you can go by tractor?

SIR – Residents of Sark are currently divided over whether tractor-driving on Sundays should continue to be restricted. More to the point, however, is that tractors there have long been used as a cynical alternative to cars, which are mercifully still banned. The island must have more tractors per head of population and per hectare of land than anywhere else in the world.

Still, one envies this comparatively minor element of discord in Sark’s political life.

Robin Bryer 
Yeovil, Somerset

Unnatural quiet

SIR – Rona Knight’s observation (Letters, June 27) about the “almost total absence of bees and other insects” is exactly what Rachel Carson predicted 60 years ago in her book Silent Spring.

At that time, we had curlews and cuckoos, snipe and plover, red squirrels and barn owls. We also had insects all over our windscreens, and larger numbers of swallows, and enjoyed glorious night skies and much more open countryside.

We are making strenuous efforts to improve the environment and enhance habitats now, but I fear they are too little, too late.

Jeremy Chamberlayne
Gloucester

SIR – I have two buddleias in full bloom and would have expected them to be covered in butterflies.

Absolutely none. Is anyone else experiencing this?

Ann Woodings
Ipswich, Suffolk

SIR – Every June we are visited by hundreds of bees, which swarm for weeks over our Cotoneaster hedge as it starts to flower.

Luckily for us they have been here again this year, and we were delighted by their constant humming.

Thesca Pointon-Taylor
Penn, Buckinghamshire

SIR – My guess is that the migratory birds will be back once the general election campaign is over.

Derek Wellman
Lincoln

In apps we trust

SIR – Phil Stewart (Letters, June 28) recommends getting rid of shopping, banking and satnav apps in favour of non-digital alternatives that are “easier to use”. I wonder which generation he belongs to.

Recently I, an octogenarian, sourced an obscure part for my car, banked a cheque and planned a satnav route from Lincoln to Ely – all in 10 minutes Non-digital alternatives would have taken me hours. However, I find that I can do quite nicely without access to social media.

Mike Perridge
Lincoln

Musical PoWs

SIR – During the Second World War, we children, our mother and a cousin lived with our grandparents at Charing Heath in Kent.

At the time there were Italian PoWs working in the abundant orchards (Letters, June 28). My mother related that, when she and other ladies were cycling home from helping on Mr Wilson’s farm, the PoWs up the ladders would often burst into popular Italian song.

John H Hills
Sevenoaks, Kent

SIR – My grandparents had Italian PoWs working on their land in Oxfordshire.

One of the prisoners was asked to help out at a dinner party they were giving. On being informed by a guest that he didn’t want broccoli, the young prisoner said: “Whatta no veg? You getta the rickets.”

This was told to us as children, and we always ate our veg.

Amanda Baly
Leiston, Suffolk

SIR – Several years ago, I was in the same hospital ward as the son of a PoW, who had taken over his father’s small farm in north-west Derbyshire.

The son told me that his dad had been assigned to labour on a farm, and had worked so hard that, when the war was over, the farmer gave him a 50-acre plot.

He decided not to go home, and developed his land so effectively that he was eventually able to bequeath farms to his two sons and two daughters, all of whom are still running them.

Ken Hope
Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire

SIR – Did British PoWs ever work on German farms?

Margaret Vince
Machynlleth, Montgomeryshire

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