Andy Burnham is absolutely right (Keir Starmer can succeed if he embraces English devolution, 13 May). Labour has always been too timorous, neurotically worrying about what the polls are saying, instead of putting forward positive, clearcut ideas based on how to achieve the twin pillars of Labour philosophy: social justice and equality. They should produce a full programme of what they would do in office, fully costed. Their plans should cover those areas (so many) that the Tories have neglected, botched or skewed in favour of the rich.
They should also include a radical revival of local government powers and the economies of their communities, especially in the hitherto most deprived areas. They should put Brexit behind them and concentrate on forming a close and mutually beneficial relationship with our nearest neighbours and allies, the EU. While not ruling out the possibility of full devolution for the countries of the union, they should come together as full equals with a view to finding solutions that would satisfy their aspirations.
Richard Griffiths
King’s Lynn, Norfolk
• Andy Burnham’s sensible advice should be taken seriously by Labour. As he says, the party doesn’t need any more focus groups or another policy review. It should start by listening to its mayors and their first-hand knowledge of what works on the ground. “Levelling up” has to be exposed as a vacuous con: it can’t happen without vertical redistribution, which is anathema to Boris Johnson’s ideology. Labour’s alternative – social justice – is a conviction that can unite all party members. Labour should make a universal appeal to fairness – in education, healthy life expectancy, housing, working conditions, etc – combined with aspirational high quality outcome goals and openness about the taxes necessary to pay for a more equal and more prosperous society.
Alan Walker
Professor of social policy, University of Sheffield
• At last, some proper insight from a Labour politician. I date the decline of the social democratic left to the Tony Blair years, when politicians saw their relationship with the voters as one of empathy, not action: “I understand you, I sympathise with you, therefore I don’t need to do anything more for you”. Hence the perceived need to visit places like Hartlepool and eat pie and chips. I have never understood what focus groups can tell the Labour party that their MPs and councillors do not already know. Don’t they connect with the voters in their constituencies? Don’t they realise they’d win votes by offering people a policy programme that would make a real difference to their lives?
Michael Kenny
Glasgow
• It is heartening to read of others challenging the Labour party’s increasingly redundant identification of its “missing” voters as working class (Letters, 12 May). Nostalgia clearly has a political impact when associated with nation, race and the second world war, but nostalgia for a clearly definable working class in 2021 does not. Labour needs to recognise the changes that have occurred in the past 30 years, in which employment has become more insecure and badly paid. The slogan “all jobs should be good jobs” might be one way of stepping away from the fantasies of a homogeneous “working class”.
Yes, that class was once a central part of our political landscape, but it did not necessarily support the aspirations and values of those people – women and racial minorities, for example – who stood outside its definition of male manual workers. Work has changed and Labour, instead of invoking a vanished world, could propose a new, more radical perception of class that is based in contemporary reality.
Mary Evans
Patrixbourne, Kent
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