Britain should come first
Sir: Reading Clemency Burton-Hill’s ‘Cameron is taking on Brown — in Rwanda’ (5 May) I felt my blood boil. I have every sympathy with the people of Rwanda but surely Conservative MPs’ time would be much better spent grappling with the issues facing ordinary people in Britain?
As Andrew Mitchell, Hugo Swire and David Mundell have some time on their hands this summer, perhaps they would like to help out at my daughter’s ‘bog-standard’ comprehensive where, while she works hard to achieve her ambition of studying Law, other pupils smoke cannabis in the toilets and routinely disrupt classes. Or perhaps they would prefer to clean up the broken glass and graffiti left by the (not very) huggable hoodies in the children’s playground? Or they could give the benefit of their business skills to local hauliers struggling to survive against low-wage-migrant-employing competitors?
Election turnouts have fallen because ordinary people believe politicians of all hues have no interest in what life is actually like beyond Islington and Notting Hill. The concerns of the lower-middle and skilled working classes are treated with disdain by all the major parties and disaffection seethes under the surface here. I have spoken to many people who are tempted to vote BNP, despite their revulsion towards racism, because it’s the only party which appears to be listening to them.
This may come as a shock to David Cameron, but neither Africa, nor climate change, will influence the vote of anybody around here, or in Manchester, Liverpool or Rochdale for that matter.
Sue Ward Derbyshire
Previous page
