SIR - What has promoted Prime Minster Sunak to opt for a July 4 general election?

A possible consideration has been two pieces of chance good news these last few days on the economic front.

It is true that the rate of inflation has fallen. Also the IMF has uprated the expected rate of growth of the UK economy. These are two bits of data that allow Sunak to claim that his “plan” is working, and the we are moving into the financial sunshine.

It would be foolish in the extreme for voters to be taken in by any such claim. The truth is that the Conservatives have mismanaged the economy woefully in the last 14 years. Respected economists are close to unanimous (a rare event with any collection of economists) that austerity was a huge mistake. To this we can add the economic fallout of Brexit that has resulted in the UK economy being 5% smaller than it would have been had we not left the EU.

The National Audit Office, a seriously impartial body, recently came up with the estimate that Brexit had cost each British family, on average, £1,000. Equally to the point, the reduced size of the economy has meant that government receipts from taxation are £40 billion lower than would have been the case had we not left the EU.

Successive Conservative governments (including the short-lived but disastrous Liz Truss administration that drove interest rates through the roof) have to own the long-term damage that has been done.

The two current atypical items of economic good news mentioned above should not be allowed to expunge twenty examples of bad practice. In casting their ballots on July 4 voters should remember 14 years of economic mismanagement and not be wowed by two items of chance good news.

John Cole, Oakroyd Terrace, Baildon