I voted to leave the EU last year and your pages have been repeatedly used to castigate and denigrate all who did. However, I’m willing to persevere because I live in the hope that your contributors will eventually realise that, while they may be correct about some, many had and have very good reasons for wishing to follow a different route. Indeed, I note that this trend is slowly seeping into your pages. Now I read that to Polly Toynbee that fine upstanding illuminatus George Osborne is to become the great hope of those who hanker for the good old days (Osborne could be a potent weapon in this Brexit war, 21 March). Despite her caveats she should be warned that those who choose to sup with the devil still need very long spoons. At least she can bask in the gratification of knowing that she’ll also have John Major and Tony Blair marching shoulder to shoulder with her. Brexit certainly provides us with some interesting bedfellows and the fine spectacle of both our political and journalistic worlds in disarray.
Graham Smith
St Ives, Cornwall
• George Osborne responded to criticism of his new job by saying – as MPs always do when criticised about their new jobs – that “parliament is enhanced when we have people from all walks of life and different experience in the debate” (MPs may ask Osborne to decline job at Standard, 21 March). “All walks of life” is of course an ancient parliamentary term which means non-executive director or adviser to a bank, with the occasional maverick daring to write a newspaper column or work in the law. Sadly MPs don’t ever seem able to broaden the rich experience of parliament by finding work part-time as a social worker, or volunteering with autistic children, or with adults with dementia, or teaching adult literacy. I wonder why.
Iain Rowan
Sunderland
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