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| Labour can win votes if it stands by its principles | Labour can win votes if it stands by its principles |
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| Never have I disagreed so vehemently with Polly Toynbee, a critic I admire enormously, (Labour’s debate is leaden, but the next leader is emerging, 23 June). Who at the demonstration in Parliament Square could disagree with Jeremy Corbyn’s analysis? The exploitation of the poor by the rich, as he claimed, is the seam that runs through every government policy. Anything short of total opposition amounts to collusion and a betrayal of the Labour party’s historic role in supporting the poor, the weak and the helpless. As Corbyn showed, Conservative supremacy is built on fear, the fear that even a show of opposition will lead to still worse treatment of the poor. Labour looks with hope to the future. Polly’s objections amount to a call for a cautious Labour to disguise its principles in case the public takes fright – on Trident, for example. The same goes by implication for the cuts and austerity. Yet many of us believe that unless Labour admits its mistakes and humbly strives to renew its mission, it can have no claim on the loyalty of its natural supporters. Labour surely has no chance of bouncing back into power under a “charismatic” leader, even as chimerical as Blair. The party needs to work its passage under honest leaders of Corbyn’s calibre.Dr John Mackrell London | Never have I disagreed so vehemently with Polly Toynbee, a critic I admire enormously, (Labour’s debate is leaden, but the next leader is emerging, 23 June). Who at the demonstration in Parliament Square could disagree with Jeremy Corbyn’s analysis? The exploitation of the poor by the rich, as he claimed, is the seam that runs through every government policy. Anything short of total opposition amounts to collusion and a betrayal of the Labour party’s historic role in supporting the poor, the weak and the helpless. As Corbyn showed, Conservative supremacy is built on fear, the fear that even a show of opposition will lead to still worse treatment of the poor. Labour looks with hope to the future. Polly’s objections amount to a call for a cautious Labour to disguise its principles in case the public takes fright – on Trident, for example. The same goes by implication for the cuts and austerity. Yet many of us believe that unless Labour admits its mistakes and humbly strives to renew its mission, it can have no claim on the loyalty of its natural supporters. Labour surely has no chance of bouncing back into power under a “charismatic” leader, even as chimerical as Blair. The party needs to work its passage under honest leaders of Corbyn’s calibre.Dr John Mackrell London |
| • Polly Toynbee’s article was mistaken in its casual dismissal of Jeremy Corbyn. We need a careful analysis of why Labour lost the last election. First, Labour was obliterated by the SNP in Scotland. The SNP won over 50% of the vote on an anti-austerity platform, calling for the scrapping of Trident. Clearly, support for a clear and bold alternative to the Tories can garner support beyond Islington North. Second, the party lost votes to Ukip, which, as well as whipping up some racist jingoistic sentiments, ran on an anti-establishment platform and won support among the white working class. With over 70% of Ukip voters supporting nationalisation of the railways and energy companies, a clear socialist programme could win back vast swaths of support to Labour. Next, Labour lost the election because it did not inspire working class or black, Asian or minority ethnic people to vote – hardly surprising given the party’s “tougher than the Tories on benefits” message or anti-immigrant mugs. You can’t out-Tory the Tories. Why would the electorate take a risk and vote for austerity with a human face? If any of the other candidates wins the leadership election, and offers nothing more than a slightly more leftwing version of the Tories, the party will be revealed as nothing more than a power-hungry and unprincipled Machiavellian machine. The electorate will stick with the “devil they know”. If we want to kick the Tories out, we need to vote Corbyn.Jack Halinski-Fitzpatrick London | |
| • John Crace reminds us in his sketch of the sheer heartlessness of this government (Fear stalks the house as Tories unleash IDS, 23 June) and in the same edition Rowena Mason’s report (Cameron’s tax credit cuts under fire from all sides) reveals yet again the increasingly blatant cynicism of David Cameron’s plans for us. So Polly Toynbee’s focus on the alternative was a welcome relief, all the more so as Labour’s leadership contest has only just begun to ignite the passion members hope for. Sadly, she’s right about Corbyn. We cannot afford to provide the Tories with any “ammunition”. Having two strong candidates with credibility and the right values makes for a tricky choice but, having narrowly failed last time to vote for Andy Burnham he seemed to be the obvious choice. However, like Toynbee, I am increasingly drawn to Yvette Cooper, who impresses on all fronts.Carolyn Kirton Aberdeen | • John Crace reminds us in his sketch of the sheer heartlessness of this government (Fear stalks the house as Tories unleash IDS, 23 June) and in the same edition Rowena Mason’s report (Cameron’s tax credit cuts under fire from all sides) reveals yet again the increasingly blatant cynicism of David Cameron’s plans for us. So Polly Toynbee’s focus on the alternative was a welcome relief, all the more so as Labour’s leadership contest has only just begun to ignite the passion members hope for. Sadly, she’s right about Corbyn. We cannot afford to provide the Tories with any “ammunition”. Having two strong candidates with credibility and the right values makes for a tricky choice but, having narrowly failed last time to vote for Andy Burnham he seemed to be the obvious choice. However, like Toynbee, I am increasingly drawn to Yvette Cooper, who impresses on all fronts.Carolyn Kirton Aberdeen |
| • In your call for readers to join the Guardian’s membership scheme, Polly Toynbee rightly shows great concern over the “severe benefit cuts” that will “fall on those least able to cope” (23 June). In the same edition Toynbee backs Yvette Cooper for the Labour leadership. Cooper supports, in principle, a reduction of the benefit cap to £23,000, which the government’s own figures estimate could force 40,000 children into poverty. Anyone else confused?Ian Sinclair London | • In your call for readers to join the Guardian’s membership scheme, Polly Toynbee rightly shows great concern over the “severe benefit cuts” that will “fall on those least able to cope” (23 June). In the same edition Toynbee backs Yvette Cooper for the Labour leadership. Cooper supports, in principle, a reduction of the benefit cap to £23,000, which the government’s own figures estimate could force 40,000 children into poverty. Anyone else confused?Ian Sinclair London |
| • Polly Toynbee appears to swallow the Blairite agenda with her description of Jeremy Corbyn as a “relic of the 1983 election”, when Labour was destroyed by its “renationalise everything suicide note”. This description of Labour’s manifesto by Gerald Kaufman, is totally misleading, as it ignores the “hatchet job” done on Labour’s then leader, Michael Foot, by the rightwing media, and the facts that the anti-Tory vote was almost evenly split between the SDP/Liberal alliance and Labour, and that the Tory vote fell by 700,000. | • Polly Toynbee appears to swallow the Blairite agenda with her description of Jeremy Corbyn as a “relic of the 1983 election”, when Labour was destroyed by its “renationalise everything suicide note”. This description of Labour’s manifesto by Gerald Kaufman, is totally misleading, as it ignores the “hatchet job” done on Labour’s then leader, Michael Foot, by the rightwing media, and the facts that the anti-Tory vote was almost evenly split between the SDP/Liberal alliance and Labour, and that the Tory vote fell by 700,000. |
| Toynbee is wrong to dismiss Jeremy Corbyn as the “outsider, not playing by the usual political rules”. Such rules presumably also prevent support for any form of renationalisation, despite its popularity in the polls, or of a wealth tax, or of strict regulation of the banks; anything, in fact, that resembles proposals from the 1983 manifesto. That same “suicide note” included pledges to raise living standards by a minimum wage, to introduce a national investment bank, and a Keynesian £11bn “programme of action”. Many of the 1983 pledges were enacted, such as the Freedom of Information Act, a ban on foxhunting, and devolution to Scotland and Wales, but, of course, most were not, and the opportunity to prevent the disastrous neoliberalism taking hold – and with it the inevitable rise in inequality – was lost. Bernie EvansLiverpool | Toynbee is wrong to dismiss Jeremy Corbyn as the “outsider, not playing by the usual political rules”. Such rules presumably also prevent support for any form of renationalisation, despite its popularity in the polls, or of a wealth tax, or of strict regulation of the banks; anything, in fact, that resembles proposals from the 1983 manifesto. That same “suicide note” included pledges to raise living standards by a minimum wage, to introduce a national investment bank, and a Keynesian £11bn “programme of action”. Many of the 1983 pledges were enacted, such as the Freedom of Information Act, a ban on foxhunting, and devolution to Scotland and Wales, but, of course, most were not, and the opportunity to prevent the disastrous neoliberalism taking hold – and with it the inevitable rise in inequality – was lost. Bernie EvansLiverpool |
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