Protecting society’s most vulnerable

Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett unfurls a travesty of wanton dereliction perpetrated by Conservative party governance regarding disability care services (I am voting Labour for my brother. I know what Johnson thinks about disabled people, 11 December).

She does so with compellingly poignant candour, invoking her very personal, loving relationship with her brother.

Her plea to the sensibilities of the nation should not go unheeded. Whatever we do (or don’t do) for our most vulnerable citizens is the core barometer of our democratic decency.

Sadly Conservative governance is all about self-aggrandisement, a place where equality is seemingly for losers and IQ is the only template of calibration to be considered. A tragic complexion of shameful social selectivity, wherein the Conservative mindset wallows.
Jim Cosgrove
Lismore, County Waterford, Ireland

• I am voting Labour because I want to live in a society that values the survival of the unfittest.

I want my home country to be run on the principle that we should grow up learning to care, not just for ourselves or our families, but for strangers in need – even if those strangers are foreigners, immigrants, old people, unsuccessful people, or poor people. They may be those who are left behind, are not so healthy or fit; people who have taken a wrong turn, who have messed up, even those who have views that are different from ours.

And I am voting Labour because I am Jewish – and because I know a Labour government is our best chance to build a communal consciousness that society is made up of all of us, and will be our strongest bulwark against every kind of racism, discrimination and hate.
Naomi Wayne
London

• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com

• Read more Guardian letters – click here to visit gu.com/letters

• Do you have a photo you’d like to share with Guardian readers? Click here to upload it and we’ll publish the best submissions in the letters spread of our print edition