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Personal attacks on Boris Johnson highlight poverty of Remainers’ arguments: Yorkshire Post Letters

From: JG Riseley, Harcourt Drive, Harrogate.

There are aspects of membership which I too find attractive.

I might have voted for this were it not for their ‘principle’ that freedom to ship margarine or soap powder around the Continent somehow entails an obligation not only to acquiesce in but even to assist the mass settlement of one’s country; entirely without regard to the scale of excess of people coming in over those going out.

He is afforded 60 column inches (an indulgence which letter writers can only dream of) but fails to explain how the difference between Theresa May’s deal and Boris Johnson’s’ effort has taken him from being a loyal Conservative Party member and official to becoming a determined advocate of voting Labour.

Maybe he was simply confident that Mrs May would be unable to deliver. But perhaps also his resignation (which should surely have come on the same day as David Cameron’s) was timed to align with the Remain strategy of descending into ad hominem argument: of switching from the attack on Brexit to going for Boris.

And the fresh insight he brings to this campaign? Stop Press: politician suspected of being ambitious. But how would we tell whether or not a politician has personal ambition and does it matter in a democracy?

Our benchmark of a successful political career is winning general elections (plural). This requires policies which appeal to people not only in the very short term but getting into the medium term also.

The long-term effect of policies will be judged by historians. Politicians can write history books (and indeed Boris has done so) but in a democracy none of them holds a monopoly on doing this.

A disaster as predicted by the opponents of Brexit could not translate into the enduring respect and legacy which one might imagine an ambitious politician to crave.

All we learn from the attempt to focus upon Boris Johnson is the poverty of the Remain case the lack of legitimacy of those continuing to assert it.

Finally, does he seriously imagine that individual voters can fine-tune a hung Parliament so as to deny power to one party without the likelihood of handing it to another?