Keir Starmer’s centralist rule is not the Labour we know

I am grateful that the Guardian gives space to Simon Jenkins’s warning of the dangers to democracy evident in Labour’s decision to prevent Jamie Driscoll’s re-selection as Labour’s candidate for North of Tyne mayor (Keir Starmer says he wants to empower local communities. The Jamie Driscoll affair suggests otherwise, 5 June), and to Aditya Chakrabortty’s description of this as McCarthyism (Notes on a scandal: this is how Starmer’s bullies took out Jamie Driscoll – and why it matters, 8 June).

In more than half a century of Labour party membership, I have seen gains by both the right and the left, and while there was no “golden age” of party democracy, I cannot recall a time when it was held in such disregard.

I am on the party’s left, but in the 1970s was able to have reasonable discussions with our then Labour MP, David Owen, whose views were very different. But I remember on one occasion (while he was giving me a lift from a meeting) we agreed that Marxism had a legitimate place within Labour’s “broad church”. It is hard to imagine such tolerance from today’s Labour leaders.
Mike Sheaff
Plymouth

• Simon Jenkins observes that there are doubts about Keir Starmer’s commitment to localism. In Birmingham, the recent removal of Ian Ward, the city council leader, gives further cause for concern.

After decades of London centralism – compounded by 13 years of reckless austerity – Birmingham, like most large cities in the UK, is grossly under-powered for the social and economic challenges we face. Having voted for Starmer as Labour leader after the disaster of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, I now wonder if the recent heavy-handed interventions of the national party presage a return to Blairite micro-management.

Local and regional government will only cease to be the catspaw of Whitehall centralism when it enjoys a guaranteed constitutional status.

Gordon Brown’s proposals for long overdue reform of the Lords and the union offer a way forward. Is Labour nationally smart enough to make the change?
Phil Davis
Birmingham

• Simon Jenkins is absolutely right – “it’s what they do, not what they say”: the Labour party’s NEC, far from “taking back control” for local communities, is actually acting to take power away from them. Voters on the left of politics actually want Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Green parties to work together to build a better Britain, fit for the 21st century. It is 20th-century silo politics that has got us all into the mess that we are now in.

Labour leaders, both nationally and locally, need to put their grandstanding to one side and do what people actually want. The Labour party should be a broad church, built on common values. A 21st-century programme that meets people’s real needs requires collaboration between all those who share such values rather than the NEC bludgeoning us with outmoded political exclusivity.
Frank Newhofer
Oxford

• Simon Jenkins shares Jamie Driscoll’s opinion that it is undemocratic to prevent him standing for Labour at the next election. But the NEC of the party, which is elected by Labour members, and Keir Starmer, who is also elected by them, think not. What is undemocratic about that?
Matthew Bowles
Norwich

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