Kevin McCarthy, former US Speaker (Lunch with the FT, January 13), came across as driven by ambition and tribalism. Like the Greens and Blues of the ancient eastern Roman empire — the Greens representing monophysitism and the lower classes and the Blues representing orthodoxy and the upper classes — American politicians (if McCarthy is representative) seem only concerned with getting their own party (and themselves) into power and see only that as their purpose, and, after retirement, the sum of their achievements.
Francesca Cadbury
Barnet, Hertfordshire, UK
