'Politics requires that a leader be able to take his or her troops with them' - Your Letters: July 24

R Norton's letter acknowledged that in democracies leaders are rightly challenged. At the conclusion of the letter there does however, appear to be an excuse provided for Starmer's awful leadership.

The letter speaks to a "lawyers natural caution" and then talks about the complexity of issues being faced.

I would however point out that, politics requires that a leader be able to take his or her troops with them. To do this a leader must surely show sound judgement and take wide soundings of those he or she requires to support them. With the winter fuel payment and the then disability changes Starmer did not do this effectively.

He has been forced into two massive U turns in less than one year in office and all this with an overall majority of 180! At the same time his hiking of NI on employers is causing unemployment to rise and depressing business start up and expansions. Economic growth is anaemic and even the OBR now says the public finances are unsustainable. We are broke.

Starmer has in 12 months made everything worse. He has failed to deliver on election promises to curb illegal migration, making zero noticeable progress in smashing the gangs responsible for the illegal boat crossings.

Leaders need to be competent, collegiate with a keen ear to sentiment of those in his or her team. He or she must inspire the troops with a vision and personal integrity. On all these Starmer fails. Yes issues are complicated and difficult but when a leader displays so few leadership skills, then failure is inevitable. R Norton can test assured Keir Starmer is a very poor imitation of a leader. He is not up to the job nor will he ever be.

Martin Bristow,  Wolverhampton

THRASHING OF THE NARRATIVE 

The Government’s economic narrative has thrashed around more than a fish on a hook.

They entered No10 and said everything was disastrous. That there was a £22 billion ‘blackhole’ in the public finances - which turned out not to be the case.

Then they said they had ‘fixed the foundations’.

Wait, no - the world has changed - cos, Trump - and we need to cut benefits.

Then at the spending review, it was back to saying the economy had improved so it was time to ‘invest’ (a classic from the New Labour spin book.)

But given the contents of the spending review, I think how we can see it will shift again at the budget in October - something else will have changed and they will need to hike taxes.

Fortunately, this government will not be in power in three years time, but they will have done irreparable damage to our economy by that time unfortunately.

Mark Cooper, Wolverhampton

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