Letters: It is vital that we now look after the marginalised

As is always the case in times of economic and social stress it is the poor, the disabled, the sick and the otherwise marginalised who are the first to suffer and to the greatest extent. It is difficult to envisage a Brexit-tarnished Conservative Government seeing the need to do anything, especially one led by an Ultra Brexiter, no matter how opportunistic his Brexitism.

However here would be an opportunity for the SNP Government, in spite of the fiscal challenges currently facing it, to show us what it is really made of. Here would be an urgent need for the spiritual communities to demonstrate what is truly at the core of their beliefs.

I make no excuse for believing that Christians for instance ought to have a Jesus-inspired input into politics.

John Milne, Uddingston.

IT is somehow fitting and not a little ironic that the painful Greek tragedy that is Brexit should now become the burden of a man with a degree in Classics who has enabled much of the division and uncertainty we now experience to take place.

Boris Johnson will become Prime Minister of the UK this week, approved by the Tory party faithful, many of whom regard him as their saviour but regarded by the rest of the country as a mendacious and bungling buffoon. Martha Vaughan's article on the gaffes of Mr Johnson, ("Boris's colourful life fails to put off his Tory fans", The Herald, July 22) perceptively summarises the reasons why so many Britons await Mr Johnson's premiership with genuine anxiety and trepidation.

The political carnage of Brexit has presented the ruthlessly ambitious Mr Johnson with his chance to lead Britain out of the EU and to "take back control "as his Leave campaign vowed to do. Unfortunately, both he and the very people who promised to take back control are utterly incapable of exercising it, even over themselves. The Brexit process is rudderless and currently careering towards the No Deal cliff edge, the void filled only with empty and fanciful rhetoric. For those of privilege like Mr Johnson and his acolyte, Jacob Rees-Mogg, social, economic and political consequences are irrelevant. Brexit is simply another Old Etonian game of chance where repercussions are for little people to suffer.

In 2016, on the eve of the referendum, Mr Johnson penned two columns for the Daily Telegraph, one stating that the cost of Brexit would be too high and one passionately in favour of leaving the EU. He gambled on supporting and then leading the Leave campaign as the best course open to his political ambitions. He is obviously not and never will be, a conviction politician. Like President Trump, he has made a career out of mendacity and political and moral evasiveness. His farcical kipper debacle recently was yet another failed attempt to pillory EU laws and practices and present them as risible. As a journalist he routinely lied about such things, famously claiming that EU food standards would ban prawn cocktail crisps in Britain, leading to the usual hysterical headlines in the right-wing press.

Our Prime Minister in waiting, like his friend Donald Trump, is an unprincipled opportunist, serial bungler and thrives on chaos. As mayor of London he left £50 million worth of abandoned extravagant plans in his wake which were dismissed as the whims of an archetypal English eccentric. It is my belief that like the President, he is also a racist and no stranger to casual misogyny.

We in Scotland must now prepare for one of the most reactionary governments in modern times. Mr Johnson cares little for the Union in reality and views our devolved parliament with a mixture of indifference and contempt. He has little actual support even among Scottish Conservatives, with the exception of sycophants like Ross Thomson and Douglas Ross. Mr Johnson's premiership, if left unchecked, could witness the end of the United Kingdom in the not too distant future.

Owen Kelly, Stirling.

NO doubt David Cameron was right when he saw Boris Johnson as a liability to be kept out of Scotland during the referendum campaign ("Johnson was considered a ‘liability’ for Indyref fight", The Herald, July 19). I am reminded of an occasion many years ago when I was in an STV studio one night invited to debate local government funding with this man with tousled blond hair up from London I had never heard of before. He asserted that Glasgow was well funded by the Conservative Government. I invited him to visit Milton in my constituency where the tenants of the council had not had a lick of paint on their stairwells for 40 years, and there were flats that were unlettable because they were in a state of disrepair and the council had no money to bring them back to standard. His reply was "Well, why don't they do the job themselves?"

This would seem to be an early example of his famous lack of grasp of detail.

Maria Fyfe (Labour MP Glasgow Maryhill 1987-2001), Glasgow G12.

THE headline on Alan Roden’s column ("So farewell ‘bad dream’ May… hello ‘worst nightmare’ Boris", The Herald, July 22) said it all. As the country is firmly wrapped in the nightmare of the Brexit duvet with a Conservative Party standing at the ready to inflict even more misery on the country, they will not be forgiven for their actions. Mrs May will be remembered for the worst defeat of any sitting government, Cabinet resignations by the barrowload and all as a result of her own Conservative Party’s infighting over the EU.

But it is the word "resignations" that is the warning shot of what is to follow. Even before the next incumbent of No 10 is announced we have had resignations and threats of resignation at the prospect of Boris Johnson becoming PM.

Regarding Mr Roden’s advise to Mr Johnson (should he become PM) that on any future visit to Scotland, "Mr Johnson must avoid appearing like a visiting foreign dignitary", perhaps he should have given readers a reminder of the rather dismal record Mr Johnson has on foreign affairs.

Catriona C Clark, Falkirk.