It has been clear for some time that Lynton Crosby’s strategy for a leave win is to blame Jeremy Corbyn. On cue, the softening-up process has begun in the media, with BBC News foregrounding speculation about how Labour supporters will vote and about how far Corbyn is a closet leaver. Steve Richards (Opinion, June 10) spoilt an otherwise thoughtful piece by concluding “the stakes over the next fortnight are stratospherically high”. That plays to the hysteria that has characterised the remain campaign from the beginning: if we leave, the sky will fall. By contrast, Corbyn has been constructive and judicious, but this is not sexy like trading insults and predicting disaster, and hence only two of his many speeches have been widely reported.
Crosby may have got this wrong, just as he made a hash of the London mayoral election. Perhaps the blame will not stick to Corbyn, but instead the electorate will remember that David Cameron didn’t need to call this referendum and only did it to buy peace on his backbenches, not expecting to have his bluff called by being returned to office in 2015. If the leave campaign prevails, or if a remain victory is destabilisingly modest, Cameron will be seen to be the author of his own fate. The future is enticingly uncertain; who will be in Downing Street by the time of the conference season? I am sorely tempted to spoil my ballot paper by writing “Each campaign as vile as the other – neither deserves my vote”.
W Stephen Gilbert
Author, Jeremy Corbyn – Accidental Hero, Corsham, Wiltshire
• Previous leaders of the Labour party have been very clear about the vital importance of a remain vote (Letters, 4 June). No room of doubt there; no ambiguity; no obfuscation of the message. However, Jeremy Corbyn appears to want to find grey areas in the debate (Labour grandees warn party: redouble efforts now or face Brexit, 11 June). In this referendum, at this stage and with the polls being so close, there are none. It just gives the impression that he’s really not that interested in winning. But this time winning is all and to lose would herald a calamitous descent into Little Englander parochialism, instead of promoting a positive, collaborative, outward-looking internationalism. Heart and soul time, Jeremy.
Simon Horne
London
• Only 10 Labour MPs – none of them shadow Ministers – have signed up to the leave camp. Yet in a limp and querulous remain campaign the most effective voices – after Scotland’s First Minister – are the Tory PM and chancellor who got us into this referendum mess in the first place, and who now hector us about the damage to big business and the balance of payments if we were to vote out. One would expect Labour MPs to have internationalist instincts and to be capable – while acknowledging the unease which loss of local identity is causing in the localities to which EU migrants come – to nevertheless extol the benefits of this immigration to Britain. Yet this is not happening. It would be truly shocking if it were revealed that the majority of the PLP are more motivated by seeking the means to unseat Jeremy Corbyn from their own leadership than they are by making a once-in-a-lifetime campaign to stay in the EU.
Nick Watts
Chippenham, Wiltshire
• Your report notes that Labour voters back remain at 61%, compared with only 39% of Conservatives. Surely your headline should have read “Cameron fails to rally Tory support” and perhaps a subheading “Labour determined to increase their remain support and fill the breach”. The thrust of the article, that Labour may be blamed for Brexit, must be wrong. There is only one culprit here – Cameron. He has acted with gross irresponsibility in calling for a referendum and has taken a huge and unnecessary gamble with this country’s long-term future. He is shouting loudly now about the dangers of Brexit, but who believes him – only six months ago, during his negotiations with the EU, he was quite happy for the UK to leave if he didn’t get an acceptable deal. Regardless of the outcome of the referendum, I think the Guardian should be calling for Cameron’s resignation. He is not fit to be our prime minister.
Michael Brown
Worthing, West Sussex
• Tony Blair, as the winner of three elections, might have been seen by history as one of the past century’s more successful prime ministers had it not been for his decision to join Bush in the invasion of Iraq. By that decision he was damned to go down in history as a liar, the good things he undoubtedly achieved, lost in the shadow of Iraq. With Cameron, if the decision is to leave the EU, his damnation will come not from any dishonesty or manipulation of parliament, but from the sheer stupidity of his decision to call a referendum.
This will be seen not only as a massive error of judgment, and a wholly unnecessary kowtowing to the Eurosceptics in his party, but the most devastating demonstration of the reason why true democracy does not involve taking major and complex decisions by referendum.
What is certain is that for the rest of their lives both Blair and Cameron will carry the burden of the knowledge that they each, by their inexcusable decisions, inflicted immeasurable damage: Blair’s measured in loss of life and suffering; Cameron’s by the advent of a new era of nationalism.
Martin Allen
Shoreham, West Sussex
• Jeremy Corbyn’s reluctance to share a platform with the prime minister to promote a remain vote is ludicrous (Firefighter Watson adds EU to his list of battles, 11 June). We shouldn’t be surprised that Corbyn and the hard left are weak on Europe, but for Labour to rule out the one thing that could have real impact – Cameron and Corbyn side by side, government and opposition united – is shockingly infantile.
Sadly, this is yet further evidence that modern British Labourism is becoming increasingly narrow and self-deluded under the influence of the current leadership. There is still time for a sensible change of heart.
Tony Samphier
London
• Jeremy Corbyn has been making a positive case for our EU membership. Cameron and Osborne and others might have been wiser to have taken this approach too. Instead they’ve given us their “project fear”, adopting relatively selfish arguments about whether we would be better or worse off financially, with falls in house prices, increases in the cost of European holidays etc unconvincingly calculated to the last pound, should we leave. They’ve lacked idealism and vision. Their campaign has failed to engage or to enthuse. The Labour grandees should direct their fire at them, not at Corbyn.
John Boaler
Calne, Wiltshire
• Is it me or are Labour grandees less grand than they used to be?
Pete Bibby
Sheffield
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