What is it about politically progressive folk that they often spend more time attacking friends and allies on the left than targeting opponents on the right? There’s a typical example in the letter from Michael Pyke of the Campaign for State Education (Letters, 18 October), where he has withering words about three generations of Labour politicians in relation to the failure to abolish 11-plus school selection, naming and shaming Ellen Wilkinson, Harold Wilson and David Blunkett, with nary a word about any Tories.
No one would deny that Labour governments over decades have made many mistakes, but often in the face of massive hostility from Conservatives and their allies in the media, where around 80% of newspapers have habitually favoured the right.
Why do lefties do the Tories’ dirty work by piling on attacks on Labour as though they should always take the brunt of the blame for disappointments and defeats? In the last three decades it has largely been the right who have “made the political weather”, and they should always be the main target for criticism in seeking progressive reform.
Giles Oakley
London
• Surely the charge of hypocrisy against Shami Chakrabarti (Letters, 18 October) is because of her voiced opposition to grammar schools? Both private and grammar schools are selective, the former based on class or money rather than spurious notions of ability. The use of either undermines all the remaining schools in the area and by definition the pupils who attend them.
Yes, I also find it bewildering that a campaigner for the rights of the individual would act in this way. But she is not the first: didn’t Diane Abbott also make such a choice for her son?
Lesley Kant
Norwich
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