YP Letters: Sir Bernard's rants won't change the electorate's verdict

From: Bryan Smith, Quarrie Dene Court, Leeds.
Sir Bernard Ingham.Sir Bernard Ingham.
Sir Bernard Ingham.

THE usually emotive invective of Sir Bernard Ingham has descended into near-paranoid rants worthy only of dictators and tabloid newspapers. Maggie’s sage seems to concur with the views expressed in a Kazuo Ishiguro novel: “We still pursue the notion that this nation’s decisions will be left in the hands of… (ordinary people) and the few million other like (them).”

Yes, the elite were predicting a Conservative landslide: yes, they were wrong. It was reported that one Press mogul, when the results of the exit poll came through, walked out of his own Conservative victory party.

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As far as we are aware, an electorate made up its mind based on its own assessment of the prevailing circumstances.

Events of recent days justify the choice. Young people have become fed up to the back teeth of being held back from access to housing; they see their own children being taught in ever-increasing class sizes; the Health Service collapsing before their eyes. Is Sir Bernard telling us that we, the people who pay our taxes; send our child to school; our sons and daughters to wars created by politicians; should only have a vote if they vote for causes that are conservative?

Churchill vilified Attlee in 1945. The electorate, many still fighting in theatres of war, did not hear the crackly messages coming over the BFBS lines, over the sound of the shells. They had their minds on the same future living conditions as the present electorate – Attlee provided that future. The tabloids spread their toxic opinions in 2017, their front pages hit the nadir of journalism. But young people no longer buy newspapers – they did not see or read the rhetoric of the Tory Press barons. They see the compassion of an ordinary chap.

On many counts, people in this land have the worst living conditions in Europe and the conditions have deteriorated in recent years against a scene of 18 per cent rises for some directors.

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The Tory government lost its authority through its own actions and attitudes, believing, as does Sir Bernard Ingham, that it has a divine right to rule. Adopting the Conservative scaremongering, Sir Bernard says: “It is stupidly reckless in embracing an unshaven misfit, who has in the past consorted with terrorists.”

Has he forgotten Thatcher and Pinochet or David Cameron’s disastrous tinkering in Libya?

His opinions are his own and he has a right to hold them but against a backdrop that, it was thought, would ‘obliterate’ Labour and any semblance of a constitutionally necessary opposition, the Tories may have destroyed themselves.

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