Letters: The downfall of Boris Johnson is a sorry tale of wasted potential

SIR – As both Mayor of London and Tory leader, Boris Johnson arguably enjoyed greater support across the political spectrum than any other modern British politician.

He had the ability to unite voters from different backgrounds simply by following his instincts.

As a natural libertarian, he brought about his own downfall by abandoning these instincts. Many people suspected that the imposition of draconian lockdown rules, for instance, went against everything in which he believed.

If there is no comeback for Mr Johnson, history will view him as a prime minister who ultimately failed to fulfil his potential.

Martin Offer
Bognor Regis, West Sussex

SIR – It is so sad that Boris Johnson is standing down as an MP.

This man led us through Brexit and the pandemic, and played a key role in the West’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A phenomenal legacy that he should be very proud of – and for which we, as a nation, should be thankful.

Nigel Lines
Ferndown, Dorset

SIR – The Blob has finally got its man.

Mark Calvin
Tretower, Brecknockshire

SIR – I am no supporter of Boris Johnson and have little doubt that many of the criticisms made against him have validity.

However, in respect of one fundamental matter he has a point. As a lawyer (admittedly retired) I find it utterly unacceptable that the body charged with establishing whether he lied to Parliament should include people who have previously declared their firm and unequivocal belief that he has done so.

It makes a mockery of fairness and justice – and it speaks volumes that MPs and others appear to have convinced themselves that this is not the case.

Malcolm Dutchman-Smith
Nantwich, Cheshire

SIR – Shame on the Privileges Committee for its unnecessary investigation into a trumped-up charge of misleading the House of Commons.

Although Boris Johnson lost my support because of his handling of lockdown and his pursuit of net zero, I will always honour him for his leadership in the fight to recover our democracy from an overweening EU.

Michael Staples
Seaford, East Sussex

SIR – Mr Johnson says he is the victim of a witch-hunt, but I would suggest he is simply upset that his past misdemeanours and empty promises have finally caught up with him.

Nigel Richard
Olney, Buckinghamshire

SIR – Boris Johnson stands down as a mendacious and unprincipled politician. Nadine Dorries joins him, her personal status more important to her than love of party and country. Other Johnson acolytes have been pacified by their elevation to the Lords.

Gone are the days, it appears, when “honourable” members were capable of feeling a sense of shame.

Cameron Morice
Reading, Berkshire

SIR – Of all the disingenuous comments in Mr Johnson’s delusional resignation statement, perhaps the worst was his claim that he had been looking forward to “providing enthusiastic support as a backbench MP” – when, in fact, he had been doing everything he could to destabilise the Conservative Party, damage the Prime Minister personally and position himself for a future bid for No 10.

John Stewart
Terrick, Buckinghamshire

SIR – Perhaps all those ungrateful MPs who won their seats thanks to Boris Johnson in 2019, and have since been so careless with the Tories’ majority, should also resign.

Mark Robbins
Bruton, Somerset

SIR – The Tories won a landslide victory in 2019 arguably because of Boris Johnson, so it is ironic that they may now lose the next election by the same margin because of him.

Simon Morpuss
Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire

SIR – What a nasty group of people politicians are, stabbing each other in the back – and most of them without any experience of how ordinary people live. I am a lifelong Conservative, but can’t vote for the party at the next election. Sadly, I can’t bring myself to vote for any of the other parties either.

Patricia Essex
Hedge End, Hampshire

SIR – I doubt I am alone in regretting Boris Johnson’s departure. He brought charisma and fun to the dusty world of politics. True, he had faults, but at least he acknowledged them. How many of us can admit to our own failings?

He got us out of the undemocratic EU. (Incidentally, it was nothing to do with us being better off; it was about independence and self-determination.) He also made Britain a significant player on the world stage again.

He is an unapologetic Conservative, and it saddens me that the woke have been allowed to unseat him.

Lawrence Palmer
Edinburgh

SIR – What this country needs is for Mr Johnson to form a new party with people who share his values.

It is time to stop backstabbing and dwelling on the past. We need to give ourselves, our children and our grandchildren a positive future.

Celia Swayne
Throwley, Kent

The AI threat

SIR – Many people happily accept that artificial intelligence will soon have extraordinary powers and be able to render obsolete much of human endeavour. Yet, oddly, it’s only when it is suggested that this might not end well for humanity that they start to suggest this is science fiction and scaremongering (“Let’s worry about climate change, not the ‘existential threat’ of AI”, Comment, June 4).

The recent statement on AI risk signed by the who’s who of AI should carry far more weight, and any argument suggesting ulterior motives from leading AI companies doesn’t explain the hundreds of leading academics who signed in support. The only real question now should be: what can we do about it?

As for concentrating on climate change, it should be perfectly possible to hold more than one problem in our heads at one time.

Dr Rodric Jenkin
Hereford

SIR – Jeremy Warner (Comment, June 4) says that a more cost-effective way to handle the millennium bug would have been to do nothing and fix the problems as they arose.

At the time I worked for a major international bank. I was part of a team responsible for checking about 10 million lines of code for any bugs. We found more than 1,400. Most were cosmetic, but one would have wiped out all customers’ transaction history.

I doubt that Mr Warner would have been very pleased if we had waited for the axe to fall and then took a few days to get it all sorted out.

I got fed up with non-IT people scoffing at “scaremongering”. And it still goes on. Multiply my experience by perhaps a million or more, and it’s a great credit to the IT industry that there wasn’t a disaster.

Yes, you can say that the industry created the bugs in the first place. But very many systems were not designed with Y2K in mind, and continued in use way beyond their expected replacement date.

Keith Ougden
Paphos, Cyprus

The Prince in Wales

SIR – King Charles giving up his lease on Llwynywermod in Carmarthenshire means that the new Prince of Wales will not be following the tradition that his father established of spending a whole week each July there, while he and his wife visited places around Wales and held evening receptions for Welsh people at the property. Nor, seemingly, does Prince William intend to use the property as a summer-time holiday home for his children at the start of their school holidays, like so many English and Welsh people do elsewhere in Wales.

Prince William’s spokesman is quoted as saying that the Prince prefers to “stay in hotels to help the local economy” – as if the former Prince of Wales, his wife and his many visitors at receptions never ate or drank anything, and didn’t employ any local staff while they were there.

Indeed, I rather suspect that those week-long stays contributed more to the local Welsh economy and helped publicise the Welsh countryside better than the short stays that Prince William seems to prefer, which contribute no more to the Welsh economy than any other English business visitor, except that his security detail will no doubt interfere with the enjoyment of hotel facilities by other guests.

X Brooke
Wallasey, Wirral

Making cars last

SIR – I thoroughly endorse Rowan Atkinson’s call to keep old cars going for as long as possible in order to justify the carbon footprint of their production, specifically over that of electric cars.

I drive daily the car in which I learnt to drive – a 1966 Series 2a petrol Land Rover, which has been in the family since new. I am now 66, and I drive halfway to work before taking to my electric bike for the remaining 10 miles.

It seems like a working compromise: it feels greenish, keeps me relatively fit, and the saving on fuel has paid for the bike many times over.

Gareth Burnell
Hindringham, Norfolk

SIR – If people kept their new cars for five years instead of the average three, it would be better for the planet.

However, requiring an MOT when cars are three years old does not encourage some people to hang on to them. I would be interested to know how many three-year-old cars actually fail their first MOT, especially if, like mine, they do low mileage and have a regular service.

Perhaps first MOTs could be done by mileage or five years from new.

Gill Taylor
Halstead, Essex

Losing a Victoria Cross

SIR – As the editor of the Essex Family Historian journal, I once helped a member investigate the case of a forebear who had his Victoria Cross taken away by court martial while serving with the Royal Horse Artillery in the 1880s. He had won it in Egypt in 1882 under the name Frederick Corbett, though his real name was David Embleton. He is buried in Maldon Cemetery in Essex. Apparently the cross was lost eight times in this way between its founding in the 1850s and the end of the Great War.

You report that this might happen in Australia. I believe that, after the Great War, King George V expressed strong feeling that such removal should not occur, saying that, even if convicted of a capital offence, a holder of the VC might go to the scaffold wearing it.

Fred Feather
Leigh-on-Sea, Essex

Ice-cream Sunday

SIR – One hot Sunday afternoon in the 1950s, a peripatetic ice-cream seller (Letters, June 4) with a heavy cool-box strapped to his neck called at our house. My father was about to buy ices for his three children when my mother appeared and angrily dismissed the man. He should not, she declared, have been working on the Sabbath.

Colin Henderson
London SW1

SIR – Peter Saunders’s recollection of an ice-cream vendor in the 1950s who bore “a huge cool box strapped to his neck” (Letters, June 4) brought back fond memories of an ice-cream man who sold choc-ices from a similar box at Headingley cricket ground during Test matches in the 1970s.

He would make regular circuits around the perimeter of the field, calling: “Choc ices, yummy yummy choc ices” in a distinctive Yorkshire accent. It being summer in God’s own country he could often be heard, much to everyone’s delight, crying: “Choc-ices, centrally heated choc-ices”.

Alexandra Rous
London SE23

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