Louise Haigh MP is wrong when she criticises New Labour for failing to redefine the centre ground (“Let’s stick together”, In Focus). Child poverty, teenage pregnancy, nursery education and domestic violence were barely acknowledged by the Thatcher and Major governments, let alone acted upon. One of Tony Blair’s most significant, but little acknowledged, achievements was to challenge the consensus that little could be expected of poor children in comprehensive schools. The Blair and Brown governments didn’t get everything right: they should have built more homes, but millions of council tenants who had waited decades for new kitchens and bathrooms had their homes improved through the Decent Homes programme.
What Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters need to reflect upon is if the public will want him as its next prime minister. Having rejected Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband, people are unlikely to vote for a leader well to their left. By 2020, the Tory party could have chosen its second woman leader or its first leader from an ethnic minority. Labour is likely to be led by a white man of pensionable age. For a party that prides itself on leading on equality, tough choices lie ahead if Labour is to be serious once again about being a party of government, not of protest.
Cllr Sally Prentice
London SE11
I note that only one of the 10 Labour MPs mentioned the issue that is ultimately more significant than who leads Labour or what its policies are this year or next. Most commentators dare not speak the name of my party, which is not supposed to exist and which many Labour supporters hope/assume will disappear. However, Labour seems incapable of facing the fact that first past the post has given us Conservative governments for most of the last 100 years. If Labour leaders were to commit themselves to serious electoral reform and get beyond the “occasional seizure of power” mentality, they would improve their chances with voters (even under the present system).
Cllr Geoff Reid (Liberal Democrat)
Bradford
Rwanda’s reputation
It’s surprising that no mention was made in last week’s powerful editorial on Rwanda that it became a member of the Commonwealth six years ago. Isn’t it time for the organisation to question whether the country meets the standards expected of its members in the light not only of the constitutional changes, but also of the worrying situation described by Anjan Sundaram (“How President Paul Kagame crushed Rwanda’s free press”, News)?
Jeremy Beecham
Labour
House of Lords
A broken tax system
Will Hutton is right to call into question the integrity of tax-dodging banks (“When will banks learn that dodgy tax practices actually cost them dear?”, Comment). Ultimately, the integrity of the international tax system is in question. The weakness means industrial-scale tax avoidance by big companies is the norm and women and children in the poorest countries are often the worst affected. In 2014, developing countries received $135bn in aid from wealthy nations, but research from the IMF estimates that they lose $200bn a year to corporate tax avoidance.
The latest round of proposed reforms – the G20’s base erosion and profit shifting programme – doesn’t go far enough and will mean companies continuing to use opaque tax practices. The UK needs to play a leading role in ensuring international tax rules increase transparency, stop companies shifting profits into tax havens and tackle the race to the bottom on corporate tax rates. This could fund lasting improvements to public services, such as healthcare and education, which play a crucial role in tackling poverty.
Anders Dahlbeck
Tax justice policy adviser
ActionAid UK, Somerset
How I killed off mystery writer
Many thanks to Vanessa Thorpe for her piece in last Sunday’s paper finally identifying my father, William Underhill, as the author of Murder for Christmas, writing under the pseudonym Francis Duncan. There is still a puzzle worth considering: whatever happened to Francis Duncan? Why did he and his sleuth, Mordecai Tremaine, disappear in the 50s?
When he talked to me about his writing career, Dad said his most successful period was during the Second World War, when his off-duty time as a medical orderly gave him the freedom to pursue his craft. The war also gave him readers avid for diversion. His return to family life and my birth in the same year as Murder for Christmas severely limited his freedom; soon he was to lose his study, which became my bedroom, and it was 10 years before he again had his own space. While Hitler may have given the thriller writer his finest hour, I may have brought his career to a close. Yes, I murdered Francis Duncan!
Happily, that was not the end of the stories. Dad was from a working-class family (his father was a docker at Avonmouth) and always saw writing as his great opportunity. A keen student of the marketplace and, I’d like to think, stimulated by his offspring, he saw the potential of children’s literature. Francis Duncan was regenerated as Robert Preston, author of Forward Tim and Young Tennis Player. Later still, he became Hilary West, author of a string of historical romances.
Derek Underhill
Wolverhampton
