Sasha Simic says there’s plenty that May could have cried about but didn’t, Keith Flett suggests she should follow Spinoza’s injunction, and Carolyn Kirton says May was a poor home secretary and is now a floundering prime minister

The PM (Theresa May says she shed a ‘little tear’ over election exit poll, theguardian.com, 13 July) shed no tears for the 1,182,954 forced to survive on food banks. She shed no tears for nurses, firefighters and other public sector employees struggling to survive on a 1% pay cap and insists there will be no pay rise for them. She shed no tears for the 2,380 people who died between 2011 and 2014 shortly after being declared “able to work” and thrown off benefits as part of a government austerity agenda. She shed no tears for the 1,000 unaccompanied children living in the squalor of the Calais refugee camp. Indeed, she has done her utmost to block the “Dubs amendment” which tried get more children safely into the UK.

She shed no tears for the victims of the Grenfell Tower fire – a product of deregulation in accommodation. She shed no tears for the 5,000 desperate refugees who drowned trying to cross the Mediterranean last year and the 2,150 who have drowned doing the same this year. She shed no tears for the 10,000 Yemeni civilians killed by British bombs dropped by Saudi Arabia. Britain has sold £3.3bn in arms to the Saudis over the last three years. The prime minister has personally intervened in those ongoing sales. She shed no tears for the families whose loved ones have dementia – her 2017 manifesto wanted to tax them. She sheds no tears for immigrants – scapegoated and vilified for every conceivable social problem – and as home secretary sent around billboard vans telling illegal immigrants to “Go home or face arrest”.

But Theresa May did “shed a little tear” when she learned the result of the 2017 general election exit poll which indicated she would lose her majority.

Sasha Simic

London

• John Crace (Sketch, 14 July) speculates on whether Theresa May really did shed a tear on hearing the exit poll on 8 June. Surely a more appropriate reaction would have been to follow Spinoza’s injunction neither to laugh nor to cry, but to understand.

Keith Flett

London

• Public services in crisis, the rights of workers in the gig economy, the contaminated blood scandal, Grenfell, what appears to be an imploding government, Brexit… If these and many more issues were simply fake news then John Crace’s sketch would offer a comical reprise of the disaster that is Theresa May. Who actually listens to her “promises”, let alone believes them? She fails to grasp just how cynical and insulting her homilies and self-promoting soundbites are, as she desperately clings to an office way beyond her limited abilities. Her supporters are either waiting in the wings, willing her to freeze completely, or pity her in an embarrassed way. But this is no joke. We owe her nothing. A poor home secretary and now a floundering prime minister, seemingly intent on taking the country down with her.

Carolyn Kirton

Aberdeen

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