Sir – What an opportunity David Cameron missed for showing the decisiveness required to lead both party and country when he ‘declined to be drawn…on plans to build a giant incinerator’ (Report, April 23).

The major characteristic of a leader is willingness to engage in tough situations.

On this issue Mr Cameron is involved whether he likes it or not. He is an MP representing Oxfordshire electors, many of whom (97 per cent by the county council’s own survey) reject waste incineration.

He is the leader of all Conservatives, including those in the county council cabinet, whose flawed methods of selecting incineration as the only alternative to landfill are justifiably receiving so much criticism.

Soon he will be asking the whole country to trust him with our economic and environmental wellbeing.

How can we, if he selectively does not tell us what he thinks?

(He has views on eco-towns, but waste incineration is solely for local authorities to decide.) Perhaps, he secretly rejects incineration, which, until recently, was the Conservative party’s instinctual official position. Some members, including Ed Vaizey, Tony Baldry and Shadow Chancellor George Osborne still hold to this.

Perhaps he has been persuaded to change his mind; but how do we know where he stands? Having conducted a door-to-door survey of attitudes towards waste incineration very recently, I can assure Mr Cameron that local people already think it is an election issue on environmental and health grounds.

This view will only develop further as the full economic implications for local taxpayers are spelled out.

The country is suffering massively from the short-termism indulged in by bankers and their like.

Waste incineration is yet another example of a quick fix with no thought for tomorrow. Aren’t the Conservatives claiming they are going to change all that?

Pauline Wilson, Sutton Courtenay