Sitting ducks
Sir: James Heale is right to highlight the important question about Rishi Sunak’s replacement (‘Who will lead the Tories?, 13 July). A weak leader will be a sitting duck for Nigel Farage to target, resulting in a worsening split on the right and an open goal for Labour to exploit at the next general election. They need a bold, principled and pragmatic leader who is prepared for fierce resistance by Reform UK. All the proposed candidates are great at preaching to their own respective choirs, but are any of them prepared to bravely fight for their beliefs like a Margaret Thatcher? They need to reinvent themselves, akin to in 1975, when Thatcher took the necessary steps to change the Conservative party, providing an alternative to the normalised managed decline. With the continuing rise of Reform UK, this leadership race is vital. I fear they will be found lacking.
Henry Bateson
Whittingham, Northumberland
Health check
Sir: Katy Balls opines that Wes Streeting will not privatise the NHS (‘Keir royale’, 13 July). That much is obvious. What is puzzling however is how much time is spent rewiring a broken system. Why not just determine the best working health model in the free world and replicate it in the UK?
If Mr Streeting had spent longer in the private sector, he would perhaps be familiar with some standard management strictures such as ‘Follow best practice’ and ‘Don’t reinvent the wheel’.
David Soskin, former special adviser to the prime minister, Downing Street Policy Unit
Petworth, West Sussex
Loan voice
Sir: Laura Gascoigne (Arts, 13 July) is right to praise Newcastle’s Laing Art Gallery for their terrific Turner exhibition built around the loan of ‘The Fighting Temeraire’, one of 12 masterpiece loans marking the National Gallery’s bicentenary. It’s not quite correct, however, to suggest that the Laing is the only museum to capitalise fully on its loan.
At York Art Gallery we too have used our masterpiece loan of Monet’s ‘The Water-Lily Pond’ to create a substantial, thought-provoking and enjoyable exhibition that explores the artists who influenced Monet and who were, in turn, influenced by him. We have extended our curation within the art gallery to the beautiful museum gardens in which the gallery is sited.
Regional museums have been funded thinly for many years, and loans like these provide a significant boost. Our Monet exhibition has had a dramatic impact. We are selling record numbers of tickets, have attracted new donors and sponsors and reached new audiences. Major loans from national museums can achieve a significant cultural multiplier effect by boosting the sustainability and reach of their cousins in the regions.
James Grierson
Chair, York Museums Trust, York
Listen and learn
Sir: Mary Wakefield writes of her irritation at the hectoring letters she received from Conservative headquarters during the election campaign (‘Why was Jeremy Hunt SHOUTING AT ME?’, 13 July). I and many others will agree with her. The Conservative party needs to start listening and stop hectoring. Listen to the members, to the public, and to the constituency associations. Talk of right-wing policies or pragmatic policies will get the party nowhere until it starts to listen to real people.
Michael Gorman
Guildford, Surrey
Old houses
Sir: Once again Rod Liddle is brave enough to challenge the prevailing orthodoxy, this time on housing needs (‘The great bee-smuggling scandal’, 13 July). The predict-and-provide model for building houses is shown to be often wildly inaccurate, as a result of which ‘the builders are rubbing their hands’. Their hands must be rubbed raw by now, since the majority of help-to-buy and first-time buyers’ mortgage subsidies for the past 20 years have been limited to the purchase of new-build houses.
What is wrong with the old model of buying a run-down property, doing it up, then selling at a profit and moving on? It worked well for previous generations, and, thanks to successive government policies, there is no shortage of such properties on the market.
Peter Ellis
Market Bosworth, Leicestershire
Mass protest
Sir: I feel Jacob Rees-Mogg is rather unfair in supposing (likely in jest) that Cardinal Roche’s struggles with the Latin language may be driving his persecution of the old rite (Diary, 13 July). Through no fault of his own, I suspect the cardinal has simply fallen out of touch with the experience of the many faithful attracted to the Latin Mass.
They are not elderly persons clinging to a relic of the past, nor radicals who think they’re more Catholic than the Pope. Instead, they are ordinary families, young people, and others from all walks of life who find refuge in the beauty, contemplation and stability of the old rite. As Pope Benedict XVI said: ‘What earlier generations held as sacred remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful. It behoves all of us to preserve the riches which have developed in the Church’s faith and prayer, and to give them their proper place.’
May the fruits of the Latin Mass continue to be seen in the likes of Jacob’s children (recently confirmed) and nephew David (in formation with the Institute of Christ the King) for many years to come.
Michael Fenn
Yeovil, Somerset
The first left-wing face
Sir: Charles Moore (Diary, 13 July) refers to ‘his theory’ that there is such a thing as a left-wing face. It is not his theory. If it is anybody’s, it is mine. In June 2008 I wrote in the Mail on Sunday about a BBC drama supposedly portraying the young Margaret Thatcher. I said that the future Iron Lady ‘was played by an actress, Andrea Riseborough, with a cheeky, left-wing face’. I think this mention long predates Charles’s. Who knows how we both arrived at the idea? It may be what the late Arthur Koestler once called a ‘verbal bicycle’, an expression which lots of people think they have invented, but haven’t. I had in mind my discovery during some Trotskyist manoeuvres in 1970s Glasgow that there was then thought to be such a thing as a ‘Protestant face’ in that city. This has always stayed with me.
Peter Hitchens
London W8
Bottled it
Sir: The fashion for expensive water bottles described by Zak Asgaard is the more striking for the fact that the plastic bottles used for selling cheap mineral water and soft drinks are both superbly engineered and available free (‘Notes on… Water bottles’, 13 July). I retrieved two from the office waste bin eight years ago and have been refilling them with tap water ever since. They can be refilled after security at airports and, despite being admirably light, they survive being stuffed in a rucksack on trips to the hills. I guess they have to be good, as stories about sticky drinks leaking on to car seats would provoke a consumer boycott.
Jonathan Coles
Great Clifton, Cumbria
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