So Harriet Harman wants to ensure there “is a level playing field for each one of the candidates” to be leader of the Labour party (Unite says link with Labour is at risk if it picks wrong leader, 18 May). What about a level playing field for members of the party? We can only vote for a candidate approved by the MPs and – since there are only 232 Labour MPs, and each candidate needs the nominations of 35 MPs to appear on the ballot paper – that means a maximum possible list of six to choose from. We have a free vote for any one of six. It smacks of Henry Ford – you can have any colour car you want as long as it is black.
We as members have no right to nominate a candidate. Only the MPs are deemed competent enough to do that.
It gets worse. We who pay more than £40 membership per year and turn out month after month to organise and attend meetings have the same voting rights as someone who pays £3 and does nothing. And now even non-party members will be invited to hustings. What is the point of being a member and funding a party that doesn’t trust you?
What the leadership want is campaigning fodder for elections and no democratic participation in policy formulation. It’s time for us as members to take back control.
Darrall Cozens
(Member of Labour party for 50 years), Coventry
• Labour leadership contender Yvette Cooper joins other senior party figures in equating “wealth creation” with big business (Jarvis backs Burnham in Labour race as rival runners feel squeeze, 19 May).
It is a sad testimony to the extent to which the party has succumbed to the Tory mindset and rhetoric. Wealth is created by those who physically do the work – those who labour. It is they who make and produce things which are then sold to yield a profit. Without workers, wealth would not be created.
If the party’s senior members cannot grasp this simple fact, then perhaps they ought to replace the word “Labour” in the party’s name – or cross the floor and join the Conservatives?
Pete Dorey
Bath
• What should we make of the fact that of all the aspiring leaders of the Labour party who have so far thrown their hats into the ring, every single one went to university at Oxford or Cambridge?
Anthony Hopewell
Ewell, Surrey
