Dear James,

Yesterday Vladimir Putin attacked a maternity hospital in Mariupol. Bloodied, pregnant women staggered from the ruins. This was a war crime and it’s not over yet. Today there are reports that the Russians are ‘false-flagging’ the ‘discovery of ammonia supplies held by Ukraine' which may presage the use of chemical weapons by Russia. Depravity does not even begin to describe such actions. In 2012 Obama drew a red line on the use of chemical weapons in Syria. At the last moment he blinked and cancelled the missile strikes. Putin got away with it. Ten years later, the results can be seen in the Ukraine of today. Appeasement only delays the inevitable.

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Dear James,

On 17th April last year a solemn and dignified monarch sat alone in St George’s Chapel, Windsor, mourning the death of her late husband. Socially distanced from her family, her head was bowed and her demeanour humble. Not a sound broke the silence. She was the antithesis of hubris and her profound seriousness has become the enduring symbol of the nation’s current tragedy. Even republicans will respect her quiet dignity.

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Dear James,

That battered bulldog with the poodle voice, Lord Frost, the Minister for Brexit - the one who solemnly negotiated and signed the deal in 2019 that allowed Britain to exit the EU and then hailed it as ‘A great deal for the UK’ - tells us the ‘reality has changed ‘. ‘It doesn’t work for us’. What effrontery! What chutzpah! And to add to the outrage, he tells us that the UK was in a weak position when it signed. When did the Brexiteers ever admit to lack of certainty or even weakness? Does he expect us to shed a tear for our frail negotiating team as it was overwhelmed by the monstrous EU? Come off it Boris! As Dominic Cummings said in his recent blog, Boris never had any intention of abiding by the treaty!

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Dear James,

Yesterday I tried to book one of my favourite restaurants for Sunday evening before going onto a concert. The Maitre D said, ‘Sorry we’re closing on Sunday at 3pm. Lack of staff’. On the same day I went down to Waitrose in Sudbury. Large gaps on their shelves. Other shelves were full but particular products were missing. When I drove home along the Bures Road, a long queue of stationary traffic stretched back to the roundabout beyond Sainsbury’s. They were waiting to get petrol from the BP Garage. Is that the sound of wings flapping, James? Chickens coming home to roost?

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Dear James,

Credit where credit's due. You’ve done it James! Congratulations on becoming a junior justice minister or, technically speaking, a Parliamentary Under Secretary of State and Assistant Government Whip. I must say however, that I am not surprised. Over the last five or six years you have slavishly proved your loyalty to whichever Conservative Prime Minister has been in place.

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Dear James,

We all remember where we were on that day in early September 2001. My daughter called me in my office and told me to get home quickly and turn on the television. As I was already late for lunch, I hopped into my car and did as she said. My wife already had the tv on. There was a picture of a burning New York tower against a bright blue sky. Before I could take it all in, I saw a flash of a black object disappearing into another building and erupting in the other side in a vast plume of flame, debris and black smoke. The commentator was yelling, ‘Oh no. A second plane has just crashed into the World Trade Centre.

Twenty years later, almost to the month, two new historical images have just superceded those of 9/11

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Dear James,

I’m neither doctor nor nurse. Had I been, yesterday’s scenes at nightclubs around the country would have left me incredulous. As midnight arrived, the raucous countdown was enough to scare the living daylight out of me, a non-medical person. For the medical profession as a whole it must have been the nightmare of nightmares. While you could forgive the release of tension by the young, anyone with a sliver of responsibility would be appalled by Boris Johnson’s lighting the fuse for another crisis in the NHS. His rhetoric is not just rhetoric. He has yet again recklessly exposed our nation to grave risk. Boris Johnson is dangerous.

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Dear James,

We have been at war against Covid 19 since January 2020 and the war is far from over. Yet Boris is announcing victory or ‘Freedom Day’ on July 19th. On that day, England will throw off its mandatory requirement to wear face masks in shops and public transport and enter the medical version of those glorious, Brexit, ‘sunlit uplands’. Boris is hungry for immortality, eager to cry ‘victory’. And he pretends fear of no one, not least the virus.

If this were that other kind of war, the Day of Freedom would be like Churchill declaring victory in WW2 on June 7th 1944.

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Dear James,

On ‘Any Questions?’ on Friday evening, a BBC journalist, Chris Mason, asked in desperation, ‘What do you have to do to get sacked from this government?’ The answer came as a howl of mirth from the audience. Their instant derision sums up how many in Britain see its present government; incompetent, defensive, deceitful, paranoid and finally ridiculous in the amazing contortions into which it gets itself. Fewer and fewer believe anything they say or do. Your government’s credibility James is approaching zero.

Yesterday however, against all predictions, Mr Hancock did the right thing. He resigned.

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Dear James,

It’s one rule for them. Another for us. Mr Hancock, the Health Secretary, has been caught by The Sun, kissing ‘a close female aide’. He claims that he has breached the guidelines but not broken the law. Not sure how that will go down with his wife but the PM considers the matter closed. It seems that for the moment Hancock has dodged another bullet.

But the matter cannot be closed. The nation is appalled. More to the point,

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What is the truth? A big question for any one – or at least for anyone genuinely interested in the subject. ‘’The truth’ (definite article) smacks of ultimates (restricted in human beings by Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle) but truth ( a non-articled abstraction), suggests more process than outcome. Many of us seek truth, but seeking truth is not the same as finding it- except of course for the religiously inclined. The reason I am asking this is to find out what you, James, think about Dominjc Cummings’s testimony last week. Was he telling the truth or was it just a pack of lies?

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Dear James, Thanks for yesterday’s letter. No James, a three-dimensional person is not one who listens to me but one who is willing to risk their career for matters of principle rather than just toeing the party line. I have no reason not to applaud you for doing your day job but the list of your busy life is what one would expect from an MP in your position. Some may do it better than others. I certainly have no reason not to believe that you just may be one of the better ones.

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Dear James,

I’m afraid you entirely missed the point of my last letter to you. Firstly, I am not continuing to fight a referendum where the decision has been made. I am not a Brexit denier. Brexit has happened. Neither am I gloomy. I am happy that the vaccine rollout has gone so well – courtesy of a joint Anglo—Irish team in a jv with an Italian company and in cooperation with our excellent NHS and its staff. And I have every reason to celebrate the genius of the British people and know they will get through no matter what. What I am gloomy about is the state of your government, its incompetence,

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Dear James,

We are all cultural animals. Much of what we call ‘thinking’ is not thinking at all. It is a series of reflexive reactions rooted in a culture’s linguistic short cuts. We are all born into nations, into groups within the nations and we are brought up within the values and rituals of such groups. This is deep culture.

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Dear James,

It is a landscape from Armageddon or Apocalypse Now. From the air, Delhi seems to have been hit by a massive incendiary bombing raid. Funeral pyres burn in car parks, public spaces and back gardens. And yet only three months ago Prime Minister Modi was boasting that India was ready to ‘save humanity’.

Instead Modi is today seen as the initiator of this tragedy

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I’ve been away. Did you miss me? Of course not! You’ve been far too busy trying to put the best face on the worst government we have had in living memory. Having needed a bit of R&R, I'm now back in the saddle and joined today by none other than, one, Dominic Cummings. August company indeed! While Dominic has been seething, gathering his gunpowder, sharpening his pencil and waiting for his chance, I have been quietly watching from the sidelines as revelations of government sleaze have continued to seep to the surface like black oil staining unsullied desert sands.

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Dear James,

Any government has successes and failures. Polls go up and polls go down. Our present government is enjoying poll success at the moment due, in particular, to the undoubted achievement of the vaccine roll out. Boris’s numbers are up and ahead of Labour. People are already forgetting that the UK mortality rate from Coronavirus is approaching 125,000, the second highest rate per head of population in the world after Belgium.

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Dear James,

While Boris glows in unaccustomed success courtesy of the coronavirus vaccine, all is not well behind the scenes. The rest of your government are fighting like ferrets in a bag. Oliver Lewis (Who?) is quitting as head of the government’s ‘Union Unit’ (What?) citing tensions in Number 10. Just in case you were unaware of these individuals and this Unit,

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