It is hard to disagree with John Harris’s devastating assessment of Boris Johnson (Boris Johnson’s crises boil down to one thing: contempt for the rest of us, 12 December). Except, perhaps, when he writes that Johnson is “so arrogant and thoughtless that he sometimes seems almost amoral”. Surely, his amorality is proven beyond all reasonable doubt? It was on display on Sunday night when, not for the first time, he contemptuously bypassed parliament with his pre-recorded, question-avoiding “national address” on television. It was Boris the wannabe president, not a primus inter pares prime minister. Whether or not one regards his latest restrictions as too little, too much or just about right, it also reeked of diversion and distraction designed to try to diffuse his “partygate”, “curtaingate” and revolting Tory MPs crises. Not to mention his plunging personal poll ratings. The only reaction of those of us who wrote and broadcast that the Johnson we knew was unfit to be prime minister (well in advance of him achieving his obsessive ambition) is to say: “Quelle surprise.” But those senior Tory politicians who privately confided (for a book I co-authored just as Johnson became prime minister) that they only voted for him as party leader while holding their noses because of his “campaigning magic” but dreaded his integrity and ability in a major crisis, have serious questions to ask themselves. It involves accepting that the fabled Teflon flak jacket has worn dangerously thin and the time to finally pierce it beyond repair has come. Paul Connew St Albans, Hertfordshire • To the many charges laid against the prime minister (of incompetence, corruption, duplicity, misogyny, racism and now John Harris’s clinical dissection of his contempt for the rest of us), we can add a hypocrisy so fundamental and all-encompassing that it defies belief. He has chosen to bet everything on vaccination and yet more reliance on the NHS. This ignores a rational approach to a pandemic that would also have included prevention of disease and a comprehensive programme of testing and contact tracing. The first, a public health approach, has been effectively impeded by a decade of austerity and cuts to local services. The second has been transfigured into the shambles of bad management and outsourcing. Meanwhile, Johnson’s party has spent the last 10 years dismantling the NHS, leaving it short of 100,000 staff and 17,000 beds, and adding to the insult of clapping its heroic staff by denying it a pay rise. It has also, unbelievably, under Sajid Javid, blamed doctors for the very problems caused by the Tories. Johnson boasts that we were the first country in the world to counter Covid with a vaccination programme. He failed to add that his party has been the first to destroy our public health service, hamper a Covid prevention programme through cronyism, contract health supply to a former pub manager, and go on holiday instead of undertaking emergency planning. It won’t be good enough to get rid of him to solve the nation’s various crises; his party and ideology are rotten to the core. No amount of boosting will stifle the anger felt towards their contemptible wickedness. Kevin Donovan Birkenhead, Merseyside • Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication.