Your article on Labour’s 2017 election campaign (The inside story of Labour’s election shock, 23 September) was welcome. However, it is important to reject a myth about the manifesto. It was not a radical document and contained no new analysis of the pressing issues of our time. It had nothing worthwhile to say on how we should tackle the problem of long-term care of the ageing population, on the persistent failure to achieve productivity growth in our industries and its effect on our international competitiveness, or on new ways of preventing terrorism and halting the alienation and radicalisation of young people. Instead it presented multiple commitments for public spending to be financed by higher taxes on those who earn more than £80,000 a year and enhanced corporation tax; the need for significant reform of the tax system was also ignored. Populist yes, but radical no.
Martyn Sloman
Melton Constable, Norfolk
• Those of us who followed coverage of the 2017 general election, or are politically active, may have begun reading Heather Stewart’s account of Labour’s campaign with few expectations of new revelations. However, helped by citing arch critic Chris Leslie, who erroneously compares the 2017 outcome with Kinnock’s “snatching defeat from the jaws of victory” in 1992, she succeeds in illuminating the true scale of Corbyn’s achievements. Labour didn’t win -– thanks for reminding readers more than once – but to have performed so well in the face of hostile candidates like Leslie and a party machine working against the interests of party members is quite remarkable. Jeremy Corbyn is a generous man for not having sought the resignation of a substantial number of party employees.
Les Bright
Exeter
• In response to Roy Boffy (Letters, 25 September) the Labour conference might indeed be a tightly managed affair. However, with a general election possibly looming that is not necessarily a bad thing. And at least Labour is being controlled by the widely supported Momentum, some of the unions and the parliamentary leadership. In New Labour’s day it was much smaller, with an undemocratic coterieof Tony Blair, Alastair Campbell, Peter Mandelson and others pulling all the strings.
Joe McCarthy
Dublin, Eire
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