I am hardly an unequivocal fan of Rebecca Long-Bailey, but I do find it odd that Guardian letter writers (5 February) find her policies to be too leftwing or not likely to lead to a Labour government. Boris Johnson, who has brought Northern rail into public ownership and delayed the full rollout of universal credit in the last couple of weeks, clearly has other ideas about how popular the measures Long-Bailey would pursue are. Is the problem that she has the temerity to be a woman of the left?
Keith Flett
Tottenham, London
• Conservatives who read the Guardian – there must be some – will have been much encouraged by letters from Lorna Finlayson’s critics with their startling evidence of The New Defeatism, which says we must accept the appalling status quo and not challenge or try to change it.
The New Defeatism tells us that we must adapt to a world in which “elections are won by playing the game, not by showing integrity and honesty, or even having the best policies”. It tells us that since 2010 the Tories have pursued “compassionate conservatism”, when the death toll from austerity is in the tens of thousands. It tells us that citing Brexit and the rightwing press as factors in Labour’s election defeat shows, not realism but an “ostrich tendency”.
The New Defeatists seem to believe they are friends of Labour. I think it is better served by its enemies.
John Heawood
York
• Lorna Finlayson says Labour’s “policies … remain extremely popular when put to the public in isolation”. Isolation from what? Society? Alas those policies were promoted by the dullest, least trusted leader in Labour history. The result was catastrophic defeat. The Corbyn coterie have learned nothing, it seems.
Graham Foster
Brighton
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