IN response to William Moore (Portillo was a true blue Thatcher clone, Letters, February 23) I’d like to state I don’t worship Michael Portillo or any other mortal being.

I judge politicians by their abilities and potential measured against the alternatives.

He was man enough to admit mistakes were made in how privatisation was handled as part of reorganising an industry destined to be beaten by more efficient continental manufacturers; a reorganisation mostly completed after he was a junior minister serving under less talented Secretaries of State.

In 1997 when he was made redundant himself, he accepted it with great dignity and moved with the times to a new career elsewhere.

Nobody has the right to demand a job for life against the winds of an evolving world or to hold back economic progress just because people don’t like change. Portillo’s policy of selling the carriageworks may have seen hundreds of workers laid off: the policies of Blair saw hundreds of British servicemen laid to rest.

Portillo helped save the Settle to Carlisle railway, but we have Vince Cable to thank for flogging Royal Mail off on the cheap. So let’s factor such things in when evaluating a legacy.

As for Thatcher at least she’d have given the EU a far sterner handbagging in the current negotiations than May or Corbyn could ever dream of.

Dr Scott Marmion,

Woodthorpe, York

Corbyn proves party system is out of date

Time was when the leader of the opposition would speak up for British voters who were suffering as a direct result of Government policies.

Such a leader would have visited Swindon this weekend to talk with Honda workers about the tragedy enveloping their town, then travelled to the North East to discuss with workers there how to protect thousands of jobs by persuading Japanese motor giant Nissan to think again.

There would have been a visit to Liverpool to establish a practical response to the anti-Semitism making party members’ lives miserable.

Above all the opposition leader would be be raising morale and rallying support against this sad self-inflicted wound that is Brexit by presenting a viable alternative, while joining with the trades unions in calling for a second referendum. It is after all his party’s policy.

Instead Corbyn spent his weekend attacking those MPs who abandoned hope that he will ever show the dynamic leadership the country needs.

The man who has voted against his own party more than any other MP in Parliament demands loyalty as he rearranges the deckchairs on May’s Titanic.

Our 19th century two party political system has never seemed more past its sell-by date.

Christian Vassie,

Blake Court,

Wheldrake, York