“Of course, [Ed] Balls was a key figure in Labour’s most electorally glorious epoch” (Opinion, 29 August). In three elections under Clement Attlee, in 1945, 1950 and 1951, Labour won 47.8%, 46.1% and 48.8% of the popular vote. In three under Tony Blair, in 1997, 2001 and 2005, they won 43.2%, 40.7% and 35.2%. At the 1951 election, the vagaries of the system gave the Tories a small parliamentary majority, but Labour gained the largest vote, which had in fact increased at each of Attlee’s elections, finally reaching 13.9 million, the most votes Labour has ever won, before or since, and out of an electorate of 34.6m. Blair’s vote in eight years fell from 13.5m to 9.5m, the last representing barely a fifth of an electorate which had risen to 44m. Doesn’t that suggest that Labour’s most electorally glorious epoch was in fact before Blair was born rather than when he led the party?
Geoffrey Wheatcroft
Bath
• Ed Balls (Report, theguardian.com, 29 August) says Jeremy Corbyn’s policies are a leftist fantasy, unconnected with the reality of people’s lives. Is Balls’s participation in Strictly Come Dancing the best he can do to be connected with reality?
Peter Cave
London
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