There has been correspondence in The Press (Letters, October 23 and 24) about whether or not a government under Sir Keir Starmer might have handled the pandemic better than Boris Johnson.

There is one Labour leader in the world who definitely did get it right - Jacinda Ardern, prime minister of New Zealand. She saw the pandemic coming over the horizon, and she instituted a lockdown early, hard and fast. The result was that a nation of five million people suffered just 25 deaths from the virus. By comparison York and Scarborough have lost over 200 people to the virus.

I believe that Boris Johnson acted too slowly and with a misplaced confidence in the outcome of events. I suspect that Keir Starmer would have acted more in line with Jacinda Ardern than with Boris Johnson, to the benefit of us all.

David Martin, Rosedale Avenue, Acomb, York