This is a dangerous moment. The poor may well just have voted for a privatised NHS and abolition of the minimum wage, and may rue the day. But let’s be positive: every problem is an opportunity. If (and I know it’s a big if) we now sink our differences and vote tactically to return a Corbyn-led Labour government with a large majority, then we might just be able to extract ourselves from TTIP and its anti-democratic compensation clauses, stop pointless vanity projects like HS2, tighten up our tax laws, return more adequate budgets to local government for social services, and bring the NHS back into properly-funded public ownership. Immigration never was the problem, but neoliberal hubris and avarice is. A reformed EU was never going to happen anyway, so maybe we can now start to work towards a reformed UK. A nation more deserving of our pride, more in the image of Jo Cox than of Sir Philip Green.
Bob Gilmurray
Exeter
• It should not be necessary for the PLP to put a motion of no confidence in Jeremy Corbyn. He should just resign. If he did not support staying in the EU, he should have said so from the obscurity of the backbenches rather than undermine the in campaign from the front. If he did believe in staying in, he must accept that he was quite bereft of the vision and the arguments needed to win round his own supporters. Long ago Estelle Morris had the courage to admit that she was not up to the job and resign as education secretary. She was a lot better at what she was doing than Corbyn is now.
Professor Matthew Leigh
Oxford
• As a campaigner for remain I’m feeling devastated; even more than I was a year ago when David Cameron, to his surprise, won the overall majority that got us into this mess. But in the febrile atmosphere that now prevails, and will for months of uncertainty, let’s see an opportunity: for the left and centre left in UK politics to come together in a coalition of compassion and decency to oppose the inevitably rightwing Conservative party of Boris Johnson, which ironically will have been created in by disaffected Labour voters.
With Labour a rudderless shambles, the Lib Dems and Greens can take the lead in forming a new alliance of the non-socialist radical left, which years ago was Jo Grimond’s clarion call to action. There’s nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come at a time when there is huge energy of change.
Rather than skulk in grief we should harness this energy and demonstrate that people work better together. That’s when their voices can really be heard. So let’s go for it. Now.
Steve Wells
Claygate, Surrey
• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com
