I AM immensely proud to live in an open, tolerant, and free society.

Even if it means from time to time I must read letters filled with hate and intolerance for my country and its citizens in the local newspaper.

Despite Mr Moreton’s opening assertion (Letters, July 22) it is not a new era he feels dawning but a very familiar and dark one.

It is an era of isolationism, of small island mentality, and us versus them.

I can see why he favours Trumpism, his letter drips with the same language of fear and blame what we constantly hear from the current occupant of the Oval Office.

To use ‘Liberal’ as in insult in the UK, as the Republicans do in the US, is to try and create pointless conflict between the right-minded majority in this great country and the Far Right minority who seek to try and take control and bend it to their personal gain.

I strongly believe most people want evidence-based policies that are designed to improve everyone’s lives.

Whether he agrees or not that means investing in better community services in our poorer neighbourhoods to prevent knife crime, as well as spending more on an active and visible police force.

That means spending more on rehabilitation and not just longer sentencing. And it means accepting the immigration that this economy needs if it is to continue to grow. This is a great, and brilliant, outward looking, and yes liberal and tolerant, Country.

We’ve done so much, and come so far, and we should continue to build on those successes.

Yet there is a concerted effort by an angry minority to create division in our society.

They do so by pointing at our friends and neighbours and telling us that all our problems are because of ‘those people’. They are the true doom-mongers.

I suspect I will not convert Mr Moreton; but for me being a Liberal and being a proud Britain means standing up for people, not putting them down.

Luckily for him we all enjoy the hard-won right to espouse our beliefs, no matter how toxic, in public and in print. That is freedom, that is Liberalism. Long may it resist the voices of extremism.

EDWARD MORELLO

Parliamentary Candidate for West Dorset

St Andrews Road, Bridport