YOUR report (Echo, Dec 4) that Boris Johnson has urged Nato leaders to remain united amid tensions in the alliance is timely and relevant.

Foreign affairs have not figured in election debates but they touch on all our lives.

Brexit is about the UK’s relationship with Europe. The security of our streets is inseparable from the conflicts in the Middle East. Climate change and its dangers for global security can only be managed through international collaboration.

Britain has a key and leading role to play to solve these problems. The danger of a Johnson government is that it will make the wrong call on all of them.

A vote for Johnson is a vote for Trump and, for different reasons, for Putin. Both hate the EU. Trump is no fan of Nato. Trump is climate change denier. His pro-Israel policies in the Middle East threaten the stability of that volatile region.

A former right-wing American President and a Prime Minister too willing to curry favour from him duped Britain into a catastrophic war in Iraq.

Mr Johnson’s time as Foreign Secretary made that great office of state a laughing stock. Britain can do better.

Brexit has been a dreadful diversion from the real interests of the British people and a country separating from Europe will be in no position to ease tensions among European allies in NATO. There is an alternative: a Labour government committed to collective security and development unwilling to be America’s lap dog on the European periphery.

Bill Williamson, Durham