I recall many years ago boxing, which was meant to be a friendly encounter where I held my opponent at bay for a moment with quick, effective jabs. I had the technique of jab-and-clinch, which kept me out of his strong counterpunch range. Typically, when the referee breaks up a clinch, there is a clean break, but this boxer clobbered me just as the referee pulled us apart with a right-hand punch that put me in a daze. The referee saw the situation and had far more sense than I: he called the fight off when I naively wanted to continue. Had I continued, I would have legitimised the contest.

Whenever one suspects foul play, it is better to step out completely rather than continue in a contest because they will not get the opportunity to call it unfair if they continue.

The general public are torn with uncertainty — is the leader an innocent victim of a smear campaign or is there any truth to the allegations being hurled around? Every person is to be considered innocent until proven guilty.

What many of the accusations lack is specific evidence that could cause an indictment. Until then, the rumours are legally hearsay. I draw my arguments around systemic matters with arguments that go back as far as the 17th-century levellers who argued 400 years ago for the principle of “we the people”. To think “up from slavery” and beyond “Jim Crow” laws to have arrived beyond the grasp of oligarchs, that there can be an appetite for something far less than we the people, is morally pathetic.

The Reverend Nicholas Tweed made the biblical comment about “the least of them” but fails to interpret the plight of “all of us” who remain outside the narrow body politic of the party.

Sir, the party has after 60 years a negative growth rate polarised somewhere around 2,000.

Sir, the party has a leader, is well represented and demonstrates power. It is not weak, has been in power for most of the past 20 years and is likely to be there even longer. The “least of us” are the 40,000-plus who have no active say. I don’t know whether you ever thought of them.

Where we the people are not the authority when our consent is not needed as part of the process, we sit at the door of mercy waiting for whatever justice hands us. One day it is the benevolence of the king, the next is the cruelty — whichever be the tide. Would it not be grand if we could all sit under the door of constitutionality and not a personality?

Today we have a dire need for people to have freedom of belief and expression; constitutionality ought to protect that liberty. Organisations designed to be a monologue are outmoded and truly redundant for our times. At the moment this would be a sad reality for both parties, where one can only hope for fairness but is plagued by the ability to be manipulated.