The breakaway seven
Sir: ‘In both parties there are fools at one end and crackpots at the other, but the great body in the middle is sound and wise.’ One of the magnificent seven speaking this week? Well, the sentiment is surely present day, but rather they are the words of Churchill in 1913 trying to engineer a centrist national movement from ‘a fusion of the two parties’.
In those days, it was the Conservative and the Liberal parties, but the history of the middle ground since then augurs poorly not just for the breakaway seven, but for those of us who feel disenfranchised by politics. We can argue who currently represents the devil and who the deep blue sea, but right now neither seems an attractive or palatable home.
John Smith
Chesham Bois, Bucks
An afternoon’s reprieve
Sir: Toby Young has done a great deal of good work to challenge the educational establishment.
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