LAST weekend’s opinion polls make depressing reading for Tory supporters. With their lead over Labour shrinking to the point that a hung Parliament looks increasingly likely I have a suggestion that could cheer them up. Vote Labour in May.

The reason I propose this rather drastic measure is that the mess made by Labour is obviously so humongous there is no way that the country can be extricated without the imposition of cruel public spending cuts and swingeing reductions in the payment of benefits that even Gordon Brown will find impossible to resist.

This will mean that at the subsequent election in 2014 or 2015 Labour will be simply erased from the political landscape for a generation (and the Tories will have a leader who isn’t a smarmy public schoolboy).

However, if voting Labour is too much to swallow, how about offering UKIP voters (like me) the tantalising prospect of an “in-or-out” referendum on the EU? That might tempt us to a tactical switch and thereby make all the difference.

David Lacey, Durham.

LAST weekend’s Sunday Times article by Jonathan Oliver quotes a Tory MP saying of his party leader: “He’s a charlatan, the public have finally twigged.”

The test of truth is consistency, but David Cameron has outshone the chameleon in his inconsistencies trying to seize opportunistic public support. The latest attempt calling for patriotic support evokes memory of a quotation that “the last refuge of a scoundrel is patriotism”.

An older saying asks us “to beware the wolf in sheep’s clothing”. Perhaps this latest ploy will come unstuck like the discredited “Bully Brown” fiasco.

Bob Kelsall, Heighington, near Darlington.