Missing in Egypt
Sir: Your pundits on the Egyptian crisis (‘The Egyptian explosion’, 5 February) left out one major consideration. The ballast for a solid democracy depends more than anything else on the commitment of a professional, educated middle class with a stake in stability as well as human rights. In the Arab world, this class may play a prominent and vocal role in the removal of tyrannies, but, as soon as things get difficult in the messy aftermath, they are all too ready to jump ship to the West. How can there ever be democracy in the Arab world, so long as the Arab middle classes play at politics while keeping an escape ticket in their back pocket?
Clive Christie
Ceredigion, Wales
Sir: Your excellent coverage of the situation in Egypt brought to mind the fearlessly and frequently uttered observation of a splendidly right-of-centre academic who taught me at Reading University in the late 1980s and early 1990s. ‘You know, Mr Macdonald,’ he would say, ‘there is no advertisement for colonial government like post-colonial government.’
Andrew Macdonald
London W14
Lost in Lisbon
Sir: James Forsyth (Politics, 5 February) fails to mention the elephant in the room, i.e. the reason we no longer have a distinctive foreign policy. That is, of course, the creation and development of a European foreign policy to which we will be subjugated. The Lisbon Treaty established this and EU embassies are now springing up around the world.
Niall Warry
Somerset
Tangled thickets
Sir: How I wish Charles Moore (Notes, 5 February) could have been in the Forest of Dean on Friday. Local opposition to the government’s plans to privatise the public forest estate has been fanned by the reluctance of the Forest’s MP, Mark Harper (the Minister for Political and Constitutional Reform), to talk to us about it for the past three months.
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