Keir Starmer gives us hope for the future, but Labour must be more radical in office

Much of the electorate will concur with your editorial and look for a reason to hope that better times lie ahead (Sir Keir Starmer must win. Only his government can shape the future we want to see, 28 June). Like many other voters, I have temporarily put aside yearnings for radical change and a redistribution of wealth, and will settle for a government that offers a basic level of competence and decency. I will bemoan Labour’s lack of ambition and the absence of fundamental reform, but hope that, once in government, it will reveal a programme of action that better reflects its roots and values. In the meantime, I will be relieved to see an enthusiastic, united government beginning to clear up the mess left by 14 years of Conservative misrule.
Peter Riddle
Wirksworth, Derbyshire

• “The Tories must lose,” says your editorial headline in print. I couldn’t agree more. The last 14 years have been a nightmare of corruption and self-delusion. “Only Labour can shape a future we want to see,” it adds. This is wishful thinking. Public services have been degraded to the point where only radical change will save them. Labour’s extreme fiscal caution simply won’t do the job. This is why it is vital that voters in a constituency where a party to the left of Labour (Lib Dem, Green, SNP or Plaid Cymru) has a good chance should vote for it. The ideal result would be Labour as the largest party, but dependent on support from those to its left. Then, we might even get electoral reform that would end the need for tactical voting.
Rodney Smith
Glasgow

• I will hold my nose and vote Labour this time, as I did in 1997. I think that Starmerism is the only realistic bulwark we have against an insurgent far right. Contrary to the normal view, it is Keir Starmer himself who offers me this hope. His early work as a defendant on death penalty cases, and pro bono work on the McLibel case, speaks of a man of moral substance with the competence to get results, however uninspiring his rhetoric.

But I do hope that when he eventually puts down the Ming vase, he addresses our broken relationship with Europe and finally starts to speak about education, which has been ominously absent from this campaign. If he needs to raise taxes to fix the damage done by the Tories and, to be fair, the pandemic, I’m in favour. Tax is not a malediction, it is a measure of the values we hold.
Matthew Pritchard
Ware, Hertfordshire

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