At last the futility of a mealy-mouthed defence of democratic values has been pointed out in print — by Janan Ganesh in his column about Mark Carney’s election victory in Canada (“Wanted: a mean liberal”, Opinion, Life & Arts, May 3). There is no point bringing a wet noodle to a knife fight. You are bound to lose if your constant reaction to nonsense is to say, oh, you may have a point there.
In the UK, this means calling out Nigel Farage’s central weakness on every relevant occasion. Yes, he may correctly identify problems, and amplify them, but where is the value in that, if he does not also bring effective solutions to the table? So far, he has only managed to saddle us with Brexit, and look how successful that has been.
Raj Parkash
London W4, UK
