So Labour is being urged to get tough on immigration (Report, 11 October)? Fifty years of Labour party history suggests that they will do just that, only to be immediately outflanked by the parties to the right of them. No amount of policy-hardening can quell anti-immigration agitation. What is needed is a political party that will stand up to celebrate the contribution that immigration and the free movement of labour make to the UK while challenging those who attribute all our ills to immigrants.
Professor Robert Moore
University of Liverpool
• Labour’s high command have allowed a series of policy vacuums to emerge, leaving them open to getting involved in a bidding war in which the likeliest winners will be those who pander to, rather than challenge, prejudices. In common with many others, I believe that Alan Johnson may be Labour’s most underused resource, but he alone is not the answer to the individual and collective timidity that has beset the party and a shadow cabinet that seems determined to lose the general election so as to stage a leadership election in the months that follow. Labour must tell us what it stands for, and the ways in which Britain will be changed by defeating Ukip – not simply list cuts that match those being offered by the coalition partners as they square up to one another in the dog days of their administration.
Les Bright
Exeter
• I could see a “frontline role” for Alan Johnson – as Labour leader. He might be a rightwinger but at least he lives on planet Earth and had a real job before entering politics (Review, 11 October), which makes him a hundred times more attractive to the electorate than the current cohort of complete wonkers “leading” the party into the abyss.
Alistair Richardson
Stirling
• I feel increasingly baffled as to what Ed Miliband expects us to vote for if we vote Labour. We do not want Tory/Ukip-lite. When politicians talk about the disengagement, especially of young voters but increasingly of older people, do they really not understand why? When we were younger we knew which party supported which view of the kind of society they wanted and we could vote accordingly. When all parties appear to believe to some extent that it is ethical to penalise the poor for the mis-management by the rich, where does that leave us?
It used to be a basic tenet of the Labour party that the rich, however they had come by their wealth, should share with the poor. The view now seems to be: well, maybe a bit, if they don’t mind.
I accept that some areas of the country have specific problems related to sudden immigration and no money to help with schools etc. But that is not the cause of the country’s problems and it is dishonest and futile to pretend that it is.
I believe Ed Miliband to be a decent and thoughtful man, but unless he and his advisers remember what a Labour party is, they might just as well give up. (No, you’re right, there aren’t that many Labour voters in Bishop’s Stortford, but some of us haven’t given up yet.)
Angela Barton
Bishop’s Stortford, Hertfordshire
• It was surprising to read that John Mann MP (Labour, Bassetlaw) believes that immigration is responsible for “too much housing” and thus, indirectly, Ukip’s recent political success. Official estimates anticipate household growth in England is of the order of 221,000 households per year; if combined with official estimates of migration levels, net inward migration accounts for 27.8% of growing housing need. Since recent figures suggest we build barely half the number of homes needed to meet this demand (with 112,000-odd completions in England in 2013/14), it is factually not correct to state that immigration has led to too much housing.
It would be much more plausible to suggest that too little housing has led to political discontentment, with housing costs rising far faster than incomes, and increasingly those on lower and middle incomes finding that the sort of housing their parents expected is way out of their reach. That could only be addressed by building far more homes than we currently are.
Dr Ed Turner
Aston University
• Like it or not, Ukip’s rant and razzle-dazzle is working far more effectively than the Greens’ worthy exhortation, the Tories’ weasel-worded promises, the Lib Dems’ darkly comic somersaults and Labour’s floundering attempts to make Miliband and co look effective (Letters, 11 October). To a large extent that’s because their well-crafted policy statements, eloquently expressed objectives and (mostly) slick presentations are not resonating with us plain folks, something the policy wonks, spinners and party elites seem unwilling/unable to acknowledge. Well, as they are all discovering, commitment and belief is of limited value if it isn’t accompanied by insight and some sort of wow!
Jim Gillan
Huddersfield
• Much of Britain’s Tory-dominated media managed to hype the Clacton and Heywood byelection results as nothing too much to worry about for Mr Cameron, the end of days for Mr Miliband and the start of a period of Faragist world domination. By contrast your editorial (11 October) is a model of careful consideration and balance. The way for Labour to deal with Ukip is not to move further right but to tackle the root causes that motivate those who may vote for the party – namely the continuing pay squeeze and job insecurity.
One hopes Mr Miliband and the rest of the Labour leadership will be on the TUC’s Britain Needs a Pay Rise demonstration on 18 October, and when the Mail and Sun attack them for it, they should see that as positive.
Keith Flett
London
• Owen Jones’s tale of woe about rootless, soulless political parties (Opinion, 13 October) needs a comment about a national institution that should be providing roots and soul to political thinking: the Church of England, which, despite all its faults, I love. We are both part of the problem and could be part of the solution by our input to a debate about a political system that is not serving the needs of all UK citizens. We are locked into and are beneficiaries of the extreme free-market politics and economics that have infected a rootless and soulless parliament. It has required low- and middle-income households to carry the burden of austerity.
As a church we tinker with staffing food banks and credit unions when what is needed is noisy, sustained and effective lobbying, drawing the attention of comfortable households to the innocent suffering of a substantial minority of the UK population in hunger, substandard housing, unmanageable debts, rent and council tax arrears. Nowhere is that noisy lobbying more absent than in London, where the bishops and archdeacons of the diocese of London, are all but silent in the face of the oppression of the poorest tenants by the state.
Rev Paul Nicolson
Taxpayers Against Poverty
• I agree with Owen Jones that “British politics has become a careerists’ playground creating disillusionment that charlatans can exploit”. It is a pity, though, that he doesn’t mention the Greens as a credible alternative, when he exemplifies what the party stands for: “politics should be about hope, about satisfying people’s needs and aspirations”.
Jacqueline Dent
London
• Now, let’s see if I’ve got this right. Nigel Farage says vote Tory and get Labour. David Cameron says vote Ukip and get Labour. Presumably Ed Miliband would say vote Labour and get Labour. What could possibly go wrong?
Roger Carruthers
Derby
