It’s really positive that some of Jeremy Corbyn’s key allies are willing to think about working together across party lines (Labour ‘needs allies’, 28 July) to produce a government that might actually at last have the support of a majority of British people, and that Labour might be willing to make the kind of constitutional changes that our country desperately needs: most crucially, creating a more localised political system, where power is closer to the people; and changing the electoral system to a fairer one, of seats proportional to votes, so that no one’s vote is wasted.
Those are the kinds of changes that a “progressive alliance” of Greens, Labour and more could bring in. They would mean that we, the people, could really take back control, rather than control being in the hands of an overly remote, insufficiently democratic set of houses of parliament.
My challenge to Clive Lewis et al now is: if you really want a progressive alliance, will you work to make it work for Greens as well as Labour? That would mean changing Labour party policy on the issues I just mentioned – and being willing to offer real political opportunities and real power to the Green party at large, and not just to our wonderful MP, Caroline Lucas. In other words: the only way that a progressive alliance will ever get agreed is if it doesn’t simply involve Greens standing down everywhere save Brighton Pavilion in Labour’s favour.
Rupert Read
Green party candidate for Cambridge in 2015
• In his race to “move away from top-down legislative change to one of legitimising and helping enable change from below” (I’m backing Jeremy Corbyn for Labour leader. Here’s why, theguardian.com, 27 July), Clive Lewis loses track of how British electoral democracy works. Whereas under the continental system voters elect a range of parties which, post the election, horse-trade to form a government, in the British system the horse-trading occurs before the election. The political groupings within the major parties work to achieve a consensus which is set before the electorate as a manifesto. The party with the most attractive manifesto wins power.
Since the manifesto is its natural outcome, party consensus is an absolute prerequisite in the British model, which explains what has gone wrong for Labour and why Jeremy Corbyn is by definition the wrong person to lead the party. Labour no longer has a consensus. In its place one single group has taken control, spearheaded by a man who has spent his professional life in effect rejecting the British system, steadfastly voting against party consensus for 30 years, while refusing to participate in the implementation of the party’s manifesto in government. Instead of representing the 11-million-plus voters needed to elect it to power, the Labour party now represents the 0.25 million who elected Jeremy Corbyn, the man British public opinion has already rejected ahead of any general election. Clive Lewis can call it “top-down, vertical power relationships” or the “bottom-up variety”, but Labour will not again achieve power until it achieves consensus.
David Hughes
Cheltenham
• Owen Jones believes that there is a “false dichotomy” between Labour as a social movement and as a party of government (Mass membership alone doesn’t make a social movement, 28 July). But there are stubborn differences.
Social movements – for example the feminist movement, or the environmental movement, or youth movements, or movements of LGBT people – usually have ambitions which are not limited to any one political party and seek supporters from all parties and none. Why would one want credit unions, or food banks, or tenants’ movements (all instances cited by Jones) to be party political in their identity rather than working across party lines?
Moreover, social movements, like the “campaigning organisations” which Jeremy Corbyn uses as a description of his party, are responsible to their own members alone and may take decades to secure their goals (if they ever do), as different governments come and go. By contrast, a party of government must show that it can govern on behalf of the whole people, not just its own members, and can make the necessary arduous compromises that every government must make in order to reconcile competing interests and views. It therefore requires skills and temperaments that are different from social movements’, and cannot afford to wait for many years and decades in the wilderness as social movements may do.
Jeremy Corbyn is undoubtedly a fine supporter of social movements, on picket lines and at evening meetings and demonstrations for decades, never erring from the movements’ goals, enduring in the wilderness, rarely deflected by other people’s views and interests. The question is whether he can also be an effective leader of a party of government, with its very different requirements.
Andrew Purkis
London
• Owen Jones fails to talk about a pressing issue. In my local Labour party, and I suspect in many others, many of those organising it are against not just Corbyn but what he stands for. And they don’t welcome new members. I went to what was billed as a welcoming party for new members. It turned out to be a large room full of noise, a table of limp sandwiches and a few people, alone or in small groups, who came, looked and left again. No one was talking to new people, welcoming them and addressing them about the very things that had brought them to join Labour. Contrast this with a Momentum group and you feel something totally different. There is a high energy, enthusiasm and interest that is fed in the sharing. And it’s not just about Corbyn: it’s about the values and ideas he brings, as well as the qualities people recognise so lacking in politics as usual. I have phone-banked and door-knocked along with other people from Momentum, and doing it within the old party structure lacks this energy. In his self-appointed role as “on-side” critic, Owen indicates his frustration with what he sees as a lack of the working class he feels he represents, but there needs to be a real dialogue about this divide and how it can be bridged.
Mora McIntyre
Hove, East Sussex
• David Wearing refers to Corbyn’s “head-on challenge to a status quo that a broad swath of left-progressive opinion now considers intolerable” (Labour’s bitter battle isn’t about Corbyn – it’s a fight for change, 27 July). As a Corbyn supporter, I want to identify “the intolerable status quo”, so there is no mistaking it. It is the outdated nature of the establishment that the contemporary political system is in thrall to, which governs with old-fashioned and redundant traditions and language, and which exhibits conservative ways of thinking and behaving right across the political spectrum. The physical form of the Commons chamber itself is a good example. It can’t seat all those it needs to and is designed for aggressive debate rather than rational discussion of ideas and issues. The democratic seating forms employed in the Scottish and European parliaments promote a much more civilised form of exchange, and this in turn supports more equitable thinking.
Judy Liebert
Nottingham
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