Before the Rochester picture affair is allowed to fade, it badly needs some deeper consideration (Labour rocked by ‘sneering’ blunder, 21 November).
A house draped in statements of national allegiance, upstaged by a big white van representing a way of earning a living, is clearly an arresting image, and Emily Thornberry responded accordingly. Her caption was factual, minimal and comment-free. The household concerned decided to put this striking image into the public domain, so can have no complaint. The result was an instant witchhunt conducted by a political party leader who aspires to run the country.
The image was real. The politician who “naively” acknowledged this particular aspect of reality had to be humiliated and disowned. Labour had to get desperate about its survival before it would admit that there were aspects of UK reality it had been systematically denying. Now it is revealing how quickly the preference for avoiding even talking about reality has reasserted itself. It is Thornberry who is sane and reasonable, and all the rest who are deranged.
Dave Bradney
Llanrhystud, Ceredigion
• Why shouldn’t Emily Thornberry, MP for Islington South, declare publicly that she considers St George’s flags to be awfully low-brow and probably indicative of closet BNP voters, that Islington is just so much more multicultural and tolerant, and that it’s vastly preferable better to live somewhere where one can get organic Ocado deliveries all day long? The public are crying out for authenticity in politicians.
Jeremy Brier
London
• From Gordon Brown’s “bigotgate” to Emily Thornberry’s tweet, Labour has consistently ignored concerns about the squeeze that mass immigration has had on jobs, schools and hospitals. Those of us whose generations of family have worked to pay for these resources might justifiably feel frustration at their current disintegration. The flag wavers are not all bigots and racists. Many are just frustrated that UK passports seem to have been handed out like cheap candy.
Lucie Payne
Sutton, Surrey
• Poor Emily Thornberry. I taught with her mother Sally in Guildford in the early 1970s. Money was scarce in the Thornberry household on the Park Barn council estate: socialist ideals were not. She will bounce back.
John Mair
Oxford
• Could Emily Thornberry be persuaded to defect to the Green party and cause a by-election in Islington?
Rev Richard Syms
Knebworth, Hertfordshire
• I attended my first Green party meeting this week. How refreshing to spend almost all the time discussing nuclear power, housing, public transport and the environment instead of the minutes of the last meeting and matters arising. And then to do so well in Rochester.
Richard Bull
Woodbridge, Suffolk
• It seems inconceivable that the Lib Dems’ support should have disappeared entirely in Rochester and Strood. A lot of the Lib Dem vote, and a large part of the Labour vote, undoubtedly migrated temporarily to the Tories in an attempt to prevent the election of the Ukip candidate. The swing from Tory to Ukip may have been much greater than the figures suggest.
Terry Graham
Grasmere, Cumbria
• The rise of Ukip and the likely advent of regular coalition government are symptoms of the inability of the first past the post system to deliver representative parliaments. When only the marginals, one-sixth of seats, determines the outcome, it is inevitable that significant parts of the electorate will be disenfranchised. They’ve now put in motion a process of change that will end in proportional representation.
Richard Cohen
London
• Almost 80% of the electorate of Rochester and Strood did not vote for the successful Ukip candidate. Time for electoral reform?
Patrick Billingham
Brighton
• Ukip’s plan to quit the EU to give the UK more control over immigration takes no account of the fact that history has a habit of repeating itself. At the moment we’re doing better economically than other EU countries, particularly those in the eurozone.
But one day the position will no doubt be reversed with high unemployment in this country forcing workers to look for jobs abroad as for example happened in the 1980s. But with the UK out of the EU there won’t be a repeat of Auf Wiedersehen, Pet.
Roger Hinds
Coulsdon, Surrey
• This article was amended on 24 November 2014. An earlier version placed Grasmere in Cumberland and misspelled Hertfordshire as Hertfordfordshire.
