Letter of the week: Keep the faith

New Statesman​

30-04-2025

Photo by Robin Weaver / Alamy
As a Catholic, I was most interested to read Finn McRedmond's Newsmaker (25 April) on whether Pope Francis's liberal reformation can survive. I profoundly hope that it will. To put the future pope back in the remote Vatican box would be an entirely retrograde step with untold repercussions. I am hoping and, yes, praying, that the conclave will be discerning and appreciate the bigger picture. Young people responded to Pope Francis in their droves and there is indeed a youth renaissance in attendance.
Of course, there are divisions as in any large organisation, and Pope Francis didn't always get things right – especially on the role of women in the Church. But for all that religious hesitancy, his reaching out to the poor, marginalised and disenfranchised in our febrile and often callous world was his innate quality. He was a humble and unassuming pontiff, but one whose humanitarian reach extended far and wide.
Judith A Daniels, Great Yarmouth, Norfolk
To the power of four
I agree with Andrew Marr's conclusion (Cover Story, 25 April) that we must brace for the Chinese century. However, he misses the most compelling reason this is so highly likely. China has over four times the population of the US – which means that for each highly intelligent and creative American scientist, China has four.
Dr Peter Williams, Malton, Yorkshire
State of the nation
Rachel Cunliffe's excellent article (Inside Westminster, 25 April) made some interesting points about where Reform's weaknesses could be, particularly Farage's ties with America. Labour should look at the victory of the Liberal Party in Canada and realise that siding with Donald Trump is not a vote-winner. It should also stop proposing policies that alienate core Labour voters and put more energy into calling out the threat Farage poses to the NHS and our relationship with Europe, and his bragging about his ties to someone who could give us second-rate chicken in our supermarkets. I fear the local elections will show us that Keir Starmer's current direction isn't working.
Rob Grew, Birmingham
Rachel Cunliffe's piece on the fortunes of Reform, whose undermining of the Tory vote at the last election brought calamity to that party and a resulting boost for Labour, makes a glaring omission: the impressive advance of the Liberal Democrats (72 seats won in 2024 compared to 11 in 2019).
Paul Watkins, London NW1
Across the Pond
Jill Filipovic's columns on American politics were already required reading, but she surpassed herself in her latest one about how the American legal elites have bowed down to Trump (American Affairs, 25 April). Its last three sentences exhibit a cold anger that you rarely see in journalism today – and the piece was all the better for it.
Jeff Howells, London SE25
We should be worried by Jill Filipovic's analysis of the Trumpian highjacking of the US democratic and legal process. The United States still? Margaret Atwood's brilliantly foreseen Gilead looms ever more.
Steve Rothery, Clitheroe, Lancashire
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Last orders
I was about to research whether the bars in both Houses of Parliament were still subsidised when I read the final paragraph of Catherine Ashton's Diary (25 April). I thank her for saving my time. That this practice continues during an era when households struggle to buy food astounds me. Taxpayers fund our representatives' alcohol consumption while NHS expenditure on alcohol-related disease rises. If politicians want to avert cynicism about their profession, they should pay the same prices as their voters.
Gabrielle Palmer, Cambridge
Cycles of failure
Pippa Bailey's cover story in your 4 April edition has deservedly elicited a lot of reader approval (Correspondence, 11 April). It was undoubtedly a well-written, insightful survey of the content of and fallout from the Gove reforms.
It poses several, persisting questions, including: why do we examine so much at secondary and how does this impact on the nature and quality of teaching and learning? Why, despite years of reforms, do the same sort of kids continue to be 'failed' by schools? Why, despite what we know about creativity and how children learn, do we persist with ways of teaching that stress memorisation?
The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, as Bailey rightly says, gave us – more than 40 years ago! – some analytical tools to address such questions. But the answers his approach anticipated have largely been ignored. Why oh why does education policy seem impervious to research, both empirical and analytical? It's hard to think of any other area of policy that makes a virtue of floating so aggressively free of it.
Now there's a fresh challenge: how to attract back into secondary school the 10 per cent of children who don't regularly attend and who show few signs of wanting to. Perhaps they've learned a truth about the system it won't face up to: 'We've got better things to do with our time than learn a curriculum that routinely 'fails' us.'
David Halpin, Wetherby, Yorkshire
Beer, glorious beer
At last the New Statesman acknowledges that its readers might be interested in drinks other than wine (Drink, 25 April), although Andrew Jefford could have found a brewery even closer to the Ram Inn: the excellent Burning Sky Brewery in Firle itself. More on beer, please!
Colin Cubie, Hove
Haad yer gobs
I always enjoy Hunter Davies and his offbeat take on the beautiful game (The Fan, 25 April). However, in this neck of the woods we would never say 'Away the lads' – far too English. North of the Tyne it's 'Howay', while us Mackems tend to shout 'Ha'way'. Some suggest the phrase has its origins in the pitmatic dialect when miners would shout down the shaft for the cage to come halfway up. I expect Hunter would have a view on that.
Patrick Conway, Durham
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