A better successor to Jeremy Corbyn than your front-runners (Who will be the next Labour party leader?, 13 December) is Andy Burnham. He is young, popular and understands the problem. The massive loss of heartland votes was mainly due to metrocentric Labour’s dismissal of Labour leave voters concerned about unrestricted mass immigration under EU free movement as ignorant, provincial racists.
Burnham is the only major Labour figure to have foreseen this and spoken up about it. Writing in the Guardian in December 2016, Burnham said that Labour’s collective failure to tackle concerns over jobs, wages, housing and education linked to migration contributed to the loss of the referendum. He spoke of a “growing class divide”, with middle-class Labour remain voters looking down on those who voted leave as “uneducated or xenophobic”. Perhaps Burnham is best placed to make Labour electable by 2024.
Chris Hughes
Leicester
• There has only been one election in the past 60 years when a more consensual leader of one of the two main parties has defeated one with a more direct leadership style. That was in 1992. Labour must match Johnson next time. Andy Burnham exudes humanity and has the nous, gravitas and bottle to take the fight to the Conservatives.
Jeremy Waxman
Canterbury, Kent
• A stark reminder of Corbyn’s failure is that I can now travel from the south-west tip of Cornwall to the extreme north-east of Caithness without passing through a Labour seat. When the party reflects and regroups it would do well to elect a leader who represents a constituency outside London to at least begin to acknowledge what is clearly a major problem.
Toby Wood
Peterborough, Cambridgeshire
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