I totally agree with Max Hastings (Who should be prime minister? Anyone but Boris Johnson, 14 May), but I don’t just want a change of prime minister. Our country is very divided – between leavers and remainers, north and south, school leavers and graduates, city and rural dwellers. It needs a prime minister who has vision and energy, who can speak in simple, heartfelt language about wanting to heal this divided country.
I don’t expect this prime minister to have all the answers. I expect them to understand that we feel ignored, angry and divided among ourselves, and that we don’t trust politicians. They should know that what we desperately need is a process that will involve all of us.
The last comprehensive vision for Britain was put forward was by the prime minister Clement Attlee in 1945, based on William Beveridge’s 1942 report. This called for a shared duty of care between government and citizens to conquer the five “giants”: want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness. Today, Beveridge’s giants have returned, even though we are one of the wealthiest countries in the world.
My kind of prime minister would make two promises. First, they would ask us to identify today’s five giants (add climate change, racism and sexism). Experts in those fields would then be asked to develop concrete policies. Second, they would consult us on these policies using citizens’ assemblies, where people who are broadly representative of the electorate across gender, ethnicity and social class engage in serious, informed debate on policy matters with people they may never normally meet and make a recommendation.
Diana Basterfield
Stroud, Gloucestershire
• I doubt very much whether any woman, let alone a competent one, would succeed in flopping over the new low bar set by the Conservative party when selecting its leader before inflicting them on the rest of us. Imagine: sacked from two jobs for lying; a known serial adulterer; a shocking record of racist, sexist and homophobic comments.
Had Boris been Borisina, there is no way that she would have got anywhere near elected office of any sort. My dilemma is that I can’t decide whether to be relieved or disheartened by the obvious double standard.
Helen Swann
Glasgow
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