Neil Kinnock in his interview (‘I’m bloody angry. Only anger is keeping me from despair’, Journal, 9 July) calls with some feeling for Labour supporters who want to see the party in office to join in order to ensure the election of a more broadly popular leader. He does however, gloss over how Labour got itself into this mess. The Labour party’s rules for electing its leader were carefully devised to ensure that the nominations were in the hands of MPs, with a high threshold to ensure that a “fringe” candidate would not get through.
Ed Miliband and those who devised this safeguard felt that it was then safe to open up the vote itself to members and supporters. And it would have been had not foolish experienced Labour MPs, including Margaret Beckett, Frank Field, Sadiq Khan and others, who would not have voted for Jeremy Corbyn in a million years, “lent” their names to his nomination. No wonder Margaret Beckett described herself as a “moron” for doing it and thus directly causing the whole present intractable Labour party problem.
Michael Meadowcroft
Leeds
