Of course Gordon Brown won’t yet take the leap of courage, neither in Iraq nor in Afghanistan (Simon Jenkins, Comment last week). With regard to the latter conflict and its grisly toll of soldiers’ lives in Helmand, it has always seemed to me folly for Nato to join in this war of attrition where the initial impetus said more about White House revenge after 9/11 than anything else. Iraq is a more black-and-white affair.

Now, more terrorism at home, however reprehensible, tells us that these wars continue to cast a long shadow over the Bush/Blair conflicts. But, and it’s a big but, with a change of leadership, we live in hope.

RONNIE CRICHTON Balerno, Midlothian

FAITH IN KABUL: Jenkins is too eager to lump Iraq and Afghanistan together. Nato operations lack resources and better focus, but Afghanistan is not yet a lost cause. If we were to abandon the many Afghans who yearn for the stability that Nato troops are trying to bring they would fall back under the Taliban and would never trust any outsider again.

SIMON ALLEN Kigali, Rwanda

A GROWING DISTANCE: I agree that had Brown and other ministers now leading their “private opposition” to the Iraq war resigned (as did Robin Cook and Clare Short) and not acquiesced in [Donald] Rumsfeld’s madcap venture, we would have been spared an awful lot.

As for talk of “distancing from Washington”, as Jenkins says, we will have to see.

TREFOR DAVIES Diss, Norfolk

DISPLAY CABINET: Michael Portillo (Comment, last week) seeks to diminish the new cabinet. “Jacqui Smith [who] has never run any government department” and yet is entrusted with Whitehall’s “Bedlam” proved herself a tough cookie as Labour’s chief whip; Alistair Darling lived under the shadow of Brown for a decade as an able minister, and David Miliband should be seen as a future prime minister.

Yet compare that lineup to the Tory shadow front bench: David Cameron, untried but with aspirations to become prime minister, George Osborne, the wannabe boy chancellor and three failed and recycled leaders, Messrs Hague, Duncan Smith and Howard, plus one failed leadership candidate, David Davies. Small wonder the “men in grey” of the 1922 committee despair at the mess Cameron has made of the grammar school issue. There is already talk of a putsch.

BARRY KAYE Newton Abbot, Devon

TAKING LIBERTIES: The headline Brown to allow Iraq protests (News, June 24) shows how far we have travelled – it is front-page news when the government allows people to protest outside parliament.

Clearly, Brown has no doubt his MPs will do as they are told: change their minds and repeal the legislation that their former prime minister instructed them to support less than three years ago.

Our method of government is beyond presidential. After all, a president’s actions are normally constrained by a constitution. Here, our prime minister can do anything he likes if his party slavishly allows it – and the evidence of the past 10 years is that it generally does.

It would be richly ironic if a man with no mandate (succeeding a prime minister backed by less than a quarter of the electorate) undertakes constitutional reform to protect our rights. If he does nothing else, Brown’s place in history would be assured if he delivers us from a democratic system so flawed it allows our liberties to be curtailed at the behest of the largest party of the day.

PETER STEADMAN Gerrards Cross Buckinghamshire

HAIL TO THE CHIEF: I am impressed with Brown’s proposed reforms (News and Editorial, last week). It looks as if he is rejecting the “presidential” style of his predecessor and recognising the authority of the monarch and of parliament. A better start than I had anticipated.

BARRIE BRIDGEMAN Coventry, West Midlands

CATCH22: MPs are to be given the power to recall parliament during the recess if there is a national emergency but how can this right be exercised without parliament already having been recalled?

MARTIN SYMINGTON Chippenham, Wiltshire

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