Breakaway MPs could herald a brighter future

Owen Jones (The ideas of the breakaway MPs are of the past, not the future, Journal, 21 February) is too young to remember the SDP’s heyday when we progressives dreamed of a coalition between the SDP-Liberal alliance and Labour that would usher in proportional voting and thus end the two-party system that had distorted British politics since Edwardian times. I can recall exactly when the SDP candidate in Maidenhead went from possible winner to certain loser in the 1987 election. It was the day members of the Liberals pushed unilateral nuclear disarmament on to their manifesto, a policy even more unpopular then than it is now.

Owen Jones may think we live in “new times”, but who doesn’t in their political youth? Speaking to thousands of marginalised swing voters during more than a decade spent canvassing in a nearby Labour marginal constituency has convinced me that there’s no appetite there for Labour’s current leadership or policy direction, which is why I sympathise with MPs who have left the party in desperation. Rather than trumpeting the swing to Labour in the 2017 election, which was pretty much equalled by one to the Tories, it’s more instructive to count seats won; 63 short of a Commons majority was no triumph.
Brian Hughes
Cheltenham, Gloucestershire

• Owen Jones should not so easily dismiss “the breakaway MPs” as being “of the past”. The Independent Group may be on to something. If they can act as an umbrella grouping of remain supporters, allow the SNP to win all the seats in Scotland, support Plaid Cymru, let the Greens have a free run in some constituencies and don’t run against the Lib Dems in their target seats, then there might be 100 MPs in the next parliament who would hold the balance of power.

Then we would have a future. A pro-Europe, pro-PR, democratic future with lots of possibilities, including a radical socialist party.
Dr Stephen Dorril
Holmfirth, West Yorkshire

• Like me, nearly all my friends are lifelong Labour voters. Like me, every one of them now say, with heavy hearts, they will never vote Labour again because of the Corbynite takeover of the party. So it’s bizarre for Owen Jones to opine that “the breakaway MPs are of the past”. On the contrary, as Gina Miller says in the same edition, they capture exactly the mood of tens of millions of voters desperate for some brand of non-tribal politics in the face of the terrifying extremism of both right and left.
Alan Clark
London

• Shirley Williams (Letters, 21 February) acclaims the seven Labour “independents” and their new ex-Tory bedfellows, for feeling “their values have been abandoned by their respective parties”. I’d like to remind Lady Williams that the manifesto principles of today’s Corbyn Labour party are almost identical to the policy stances in the famous SDP Limehouse declaration, of which she was a founder signatory.

These were: 1) a healthy public sector and a healthy private sector; 2) elimination of poverty and greater equality; 3) a fair distribution of rewards; 4) competitive public enterprise, cooperative ventures and profit-sharing; 5) more decentralised decision-making in industry and government and democracy at work.

In view of that, shouldn’t she be criticising rather than congratulating the Labour quitters?
Bryn Jones
Bath

• There has been much talk of working with others and widening representation within the Liberal Democrat party. Now is the time to meet the “independents” halfway, and be prepared to drop the name Liberal Democrat. It has become toxic, despite a generally excellent contribution in the coalition. It is time for Vince Cable to show leadership combined with imagination and humility. As a member of the Liberal Democrats, I would be happy to sacrifice the name to assist the creation of a centre democratic party. There would be resistance to giving up the name, but it is a small price to herald the end of the worn-out, unrepresentative, first-pass-the-post system that has brought the chaos of Brexit and failed to address the divisions in society that have led to leaving the EU.
David Thompson
Chichester, West Sussex

• Martin Kettle (The exit of the ‘three amigos’ could be a Tory watershed’, 21 February) could have cited Oswald Mosley’s New party as a precedent for the Independent Group in its multiparty recruitment. The New party was formed in February 1931 by Mosley, his wife Cynthia and four other Labour MPs who were later joined by Bill Allen, a unionist, Cecil Dudgeon from the Liberals, and John Beckett from the ILP.
Tony Judge
Twickenham, London

• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com

• Read more Guardian letters – click here to visit gu.com/letters

• Do you have a photo you’d like to share with Guardian readers? Click here to upload it and we’ll publish the best submissions in the letters spread of our print edition