Well said, Aditya Chakrabortty (Labour risks total wipeout if it fails to see Johnson threat, 31 July). He lists three priorities: second referendum and remain; spend focused on those most in need; and address the traditional Labour heartlands that have been hardest hit by years of Tory austerity.
Clearly these are linked. There are other priorities, too, but I would highlight just one, a fourth, which again is integrally connected to Chakrabortty’s points: democratisation. Isn’t this the moment to grasp the nettle and to reconfigure our failing democracy? Local government has been crushed and must be reinvigorated. The Lords must be replaced by a democratically elected second chamber. The first-past-the-post electoral system has passed its sell-by date: time for proportional representation. And of course there’s more: Labour should commit to wholesale constitutional reform having initiated citizens’ assemblies to flesh out the details.
The coming general election is a real “1945 moment”, or could be if Labour wins. The thought of losing is simply unbearable.
Jol Miskin
Sheffield
• Alastair Cambell’s editorship of the New European seems to have clouded his previous electoral intelligence (An open letter to Corbyn: why I have to quit your party, Journal, 30 July). Could he explain how embracing the remain and referendum position he advocates would make Labour “poised to win an election”? If Labour did so, it risks failing to win the crucial 30-odd marginal leave-voting constituencies from the Tories and also losing to them 30 Labour-held marginals that voted leave in 2017. The position recommended would deny Labour all these marginals and destroy its chance of winning an election; and almost guarantee the return of a Johnson government.
Bryn Jones
Bath
• Alastair Campbell states his concern with, among other issues, Jeremy Corbyn’s stance on Brexit. As a Labour party member I agree, but I appreciate how difficult an issue it is for the party given the numbers of Labour voters who want to leave the EU. I also wonder how New Labour under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown and advised by Campbell would have reacted given their instinct for triangulation when confronted with difficult polling data. Perhaps Alastair should reflect on New Labour’s record on joining the euro, the key EU issue of the day, which was ducked because of hostile public opinion whipped up by the Tory right despite firm evidence of the prospect of increased trade with the eurozone and increased though modest growth in GDP.
Steve Flatley
York
• If Labour loses the next election, it will be largely due to the ongoing lack of support from people like Alastair Campbell, who has chosen to undermine him at every step, rather than capitalise on Corbyn’s initial success in attracting several hundred thousand new members and promoting policies which appeal to principled and idealistic younger voters. When Labour is the only party with a hope of creating a fairer and better society, why does the Guardian persist in giving Campbell column inches, even on the front page, and topping the list of articles in the Journal section? With his support for the Iraq war, dodgy dossier, Tory-lite policies and abrasive style, for which I have never heard a glimmer of apology, Campbell seems to me to have done more real harm to the Labour cause than Jeremy Corbyn.
Eleanor Ellington
Bath
• A Labour party without Alastair Campbell is like a Republican party without Richard Nixon: improved. Campbell should reflect on how Blairite neoliberalism, making only minor changes in the Thatcher-era political settlement and proclaiming itself to be “intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich as long as they pay their taxes” while allowing instant access to Britain for low-skilled workers from the EU accession countries of Bulgaria and Romania to delight New Labour’s friends in business and the political correctness lobby, meanwhile assuming that Labour’s traditional voters had nowhere to go, has brought us to the current situation.
Christopher Clayton
Chester
• Campbell says Labour has been “taken over by people who until recently were communists, they were Stalinists, and they still are”. Such ideologies are anathema to me and I’m sure to the thousands of other members who simply want to see policies that are rooted in fairness brought back to mainstream politics. Policies not like PFI, created by Blair, but proper state ownership of the NHS and social care. Policies like public ownership of utilities (that we all once owned before they were stolen by Thatcher) that plough profits back into investment into the service instead of giving dividends to shareholders, policies like fair taxation properly enforced, policies that redress the imbalance in funding between private and state education. These are policies that Attlee (onto whom Campbell projects his view) would advocate, not fear. These are policies that would benefit the majority of citizens and not just the wealthy.
Andy Burge
Hertford
• “Remember Iraq?” (Letters, 31 July) has became the kneejerk riposte to anyone referencing the pre-Corbyn era. Yes, I remember Iraq. But I also remember three consecutive Labour landslide election victories, when the defeat of the Tories meant peace in Northern Ireland, hospital waiting lists down, education spending up and knowing that a Labour vote actually meant something.
Linda Evans
London
• Alastair Campbell sets out wonderfully eloquently how many thousands of us feel at the moment. We have become disenfranchised by the small cults leading both Labour and the Conservatives. Please, Guardian, do not abandon us too.
Jonathan Harris
Wootton Bassett, Wiltshire
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