Labour leadership: a clear and clearly stated vision is what voters need

http://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2015/jul/26/the-big-issue-labour-leadership

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As a non-Labour voter, I struggled to learn about the party from last Sunday’s Observer. It seems that “the public” rejected Labour because it was too far to the left. Yet the party membership has seemingly moved to the left since the election (Andrew Rawnsley). So, the new members are not “the public” then. Who are they? Obviously they are not the subjects of the study of voters who were firm Labour supporters up to and including 2010 but who then voted Conservative (Toby Helm’s report).  

If you think about it, who could the left-leaning Labour supporters now joining the party have voted for in the general election? How could they have indicated their desire for the Labour party to move further to the left, not the right? They could have voted for the Greens or one of the very small parties, but not all would have embraced that choice. Probably some of them simply stayed at home. Now they have a chance to express their view by voting for Jeremy Corbyn. There may not be a lot of these people, but how can commentators be so sure? “The public” can only vote for people who stand for election.

After all this, I still do not get a sense of where Labour wants to lead the country. You talk only of how it might gain power, not of what it would use that power for. I would reverse the last  thought expressed in your leader. If Labour wants to wield political power, it has to provide a sense of where it wants the country’s political centre of gravity to lie. This is not ideology, it is the first essential of leadership.

Jeanne Warren

Oxford

Your analysis is fair enough, but seems to miss one key to Jeremy Corbyn’s support (The Observer view on the Labour leadership election, Comment). Yes, his offering is consistent with what he and others on the left have said for years. No, he may not make a winning Labour leader. But he offers a clear and clearly stated vision of a better Britain. The other candidates are proposing lots of policies and approaches about how to manage things but without a coherent picture of what we may be trying to build. If centrists want to win support, they too need to articulate a role for Labour, otherwise an old one will have to do.

Tom Serpell

East Hoathly, East Sussex

If Andrew Rawnsley or, indeed, your leader writer, had been at a village hall in Hovingham, North Yorks, last week they might have sung a different tune or been less sure of the folly of Labour’s “lurch to the left”. A group of older women in frocks, middle-aged men in checked shirts and the odd labourer – with not a leftist infiltrator (unless it be me) in sight – listened to candidates’ representatives and then voted with a clear majority for Jeremy Corbyn.

Why? Not because they were different members from five years before, not because they were subject to a summer folly, but because his messenger alone offered clear, convincing and constructive policies: above all, invest and make the economy grow for all rather than reducing deficits that slow us down.

Miliband was mealy-mouthed, scared of Tory criticism, not sure where he stood – just as all the other candidates’ reps seemed to be in that hall. As we agreed over cups of tea, Corbyn is the man for a fairer future, not a pale imitation of the Thatcher past or Cameron present. He is making the U-turn that Thatcher made Tories take in 1979 (against the advice of many) and his appeal will be similarly wide.

Richard Woolley

Levisham, North Yorkshire

It is not obvious that the best way to win votes back from the Conservatives is to copy their policies, to say nothing of ones lost to the SNP. Even if this strategy can win an election, it cannot address the issues of the age – prosperity and distribution, environmental sustainability, the meaning of citizenship, the preservation of liberty when the state has both the technology and a plausible excuse to take it away.

For Labour to develop modern, effective policies for these issues and persuade the electorate to back it will be a huge fight, but fights are not won by a failure of nerve at the outset.

Julian Abrams

Downpatrick, Northern Ireland