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Sir: In his paean to Nigel Farage, Rod Liddle says he ‘cannot think of a single individual in the past 50 years who could have created, out of nothing, a movement such as the Brexit party’ (‘The Brexit party delusion’, 18 May). Could I jog his memory?
James Goldsmith created the Referendum party out of nothing in 1994. By the 1997 general election it had secured 160,000 registered supporters, and forged a highly effective national and local campaign structure. It is undeniable that the party’s establishment and exponential growth helped to save us from the euro. The Referendum party stood in 547 constituencies, and, while not winning a single seat, performed better than any minor party in history up to that point.
Margaret Thatcher said that James Goldsmith was ‘one of the most powerful and dynamic personalities that this generation has seen’, and she was quite right. Had Jimmy not been taken from us so soon after the 1997 election (he died of pancreatic cancer just over two months later), I have no doubt that his ‘Rabble Army’ — of which I was a proud member — would have become a considerable force in British politics. Indeed, the fact that the Tories eventually became the Conservative-Referendum party is testimony to his passion, ability and political prescience. If he were alive today, Brexit would have been done long ago.
Dr Adrian Hilton
Farnham Common, Buckinghamshire
Sir: As a long-time reader of Rod Liddle’s witty columns I was somewhat taken aback at his mischaracterisation of the American political commentator Ben Shapiro whom he labelled as ‘alt-right’ (‘The Brexit party delusion’, 18 May). Shapiro — as he mentioned in his interview with Andrew Neil — is a member of the Republican party and holds traditional conservative opinions and values. He has repeatedly voiced his disdain for the alt-right and according to a study by the Anti-Defamation League he was the number one recipient of anti- Semitic abuse on Twitter in 2016: much of it from the alt-right.
Joseph Clegg
Surrey
Sir: It is not correct to state, as Derinda Marston does (Letters, 25 May), that Education Policy Institute research shows the school attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and their more affluent peers ‘has widened since 2007’. On the contrary, over the past decade, the gap has closed at the end of both primary and secondary education.
Our research shows, however, that the closing of the gap has stalled in recent years. This should concern all those who want to see a society where life chances are less determined by background and parental income.
Rt Hon David Laws,
Executive Chairman,
Education Policy Institute, London SW1
Sir: Laura Freeman (Snog a Tory, 18 May) may be comforted to know there are plenty of people in England who aren’t as squeamish as she suggests — and for whom sweetbreads, kidneys, hearts, brawn, chits are part of a normal diet and always have been. We also eat what we are given, which is disagreeable when badly cooked and ridiculous when fashion led, but helped us survive rationing, school lunches, and other stretches of real austerity.
Yeatman,
Dartmoor, Devon
Sir: I was not aware that England has ‘her own government’ (Conrad Black’s Diary, 25 May). Or perhaps the current Brexit chaos at Westminster is an English problem, not a British one.
Kay Ross
Ettrickbridge, Scottish Borders
Because you read about brexit
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