Photograph: Alamy
I can’t understand why some Labour MPs think Mr Corbyn will not be eligible to stand against Ms Eagle. The Labour party rule book is clear: if there is no vacancy it is assumed the leader is already on the ballot paper; the rule only applies to challengers. In this instance Ms Eagle has to prove she has the support (20%) to continue the challenge.
David Aitcheson
Dudley, West Midlands
• Does it strike anyone as odd that the Tory leadership contest, as the Guardian reports it, is at least partly about policies (gay marriage, women’s rights, foxhunting), while the Labour equivalent is described entirely in terms of factions, votes and insults?
Alan Bailey
London
• Labour may not yet be led by a woman (Labour: the party of women led by men, Deborah Orr, 9 July), but in Sheffield, the council is led by a Labour woman and three of our five Labour MPs are women. The chair of our Sheffield Heeley CLP is a woman and 50% of our membership of 1,140 are women.
Tony Tigwell
Sheffield
• Neil Kinnock urges us to learn the lessons of the 1930s and read George Orwell. So I took Neil at his word and read Homage to Catalonia, where Orwell warns that when bureaucratic methods are used to suppress the left wing of a popular movement, it inevitably aids the main enemy.
Richard Price
London
• In his coherent piece on Labour’s future direction (We can’t leave the negotiations with Europe to the Tories, 8 July), Jeremy Corbyn uses a first personal pronoun on just four occasions. In your interview, Neil Kinnock accuses Corbyn of being a vain man, while himself using the first personal pronouns 30 times. Remind me, how many general elections did this modest man win?
Catharine Sadler
Little Birch, Herefordshire
• I see Neil Kinnock accuses Jeremy Corbyn of vanity. Sheffield 1992 springs to mind. Well, awright! Well, awright!
Ken Drury
London
