Jonathan Freedland calls Keir Starmer “unexciting perhaps, but capable and decent”. I think “capable and decent” is pretty exciting (He won the votes, now Starmer just needs to win over the people, 5 July).
Wendy Bradford
Huddersfield, West Yorkshire
John Crace’s summing up of Keir Starmer’s speech outside Downing Street – “He may have campaigned in prose. But in his first hour in office he had governed in poetry” – brought me to the verge of tears (The politics sketch, 5 July). Spot-on, John.
Jane Pitts
Sway, Hampshire
Re Martyn Taylor’s reference to food banks (Letters, 5 July), perhaps one measure of the success or otherwise of our new Labour government should be the closing of them by the end of its first term. Sooner, if possible.
Stephen Ingamells
Ilford, London
Arriving for breakfast the morning after the election, my eight-year-old grandson informed the family that Labour had won “by a landscape”.
Mick Beeby
Bristol
Credit to Rishi Sunak for his perfectly judged speech outside No 10 (5 July): suitably apologetic about his record, gracious about his opponent and reassuring about the smooth transfer of power. So different from his tone in the election debates. Nothing in his premiership became him like the leaving of it.
Mark de Brunner
Harrogate, North Yorkshire
Kudos to Rishi Sunak for showing Americans the proper way to transition leadership from one political party to its opposition.
Paul L Newman
Merion Station, Pennsylvania, US