Labour doesn’t have a coherent political position on Europe

Owen Jones (Labour must prepare itself now for a second referendum, 14 December) misses the point of the frustrations arising from Jeremy Corbyn’s Janus position on Brexit. The “all things to all people” tactic misses the fundamental point that the purpose of politics is to actually win people to a position. All Corbyn offers is treading water while hoping that Theresa May drowns.

The agenda behind Brexit is anti-working class – designed to achieve a drive to the bottom in working conditions to secure trade deals outside the EU. It ought to be possible to win Labour-supporting Brexit voters to a recognition that Jacob Rees-Mogg, Nigel Farage and Tommy Robinson do not have their interests at heart, and that Brexit on any terms will be a disaster.

Instead, what we have is a reversion to the age-old Labour position that seeks to address any political issue only through the paradigm of “it will all be OK under a Labour government”. The frustration comes from the simple fact that we have a Labour party that, far from becoming the promised “social movement”, is simply an electoral machine, on hold for a Labour leader unable to articulate a coherent political position on the key issue we face.
Nick Moss
London

• Remain probably lost the referendum because its campaign was fronted predominately by grey-faced, serious politicians peddling boring and questionable facts. Leave went with colourful charismatic characters with more of the emotional intelligence needed to win over undecided voters. Rather than pontificating about how to win a referendum that may never happen, Labour and its supporters need urgently to relearn the hard lessons of its 1964, 1974 and 1997 campaigns, the only occasions in my lifetime that it has successfully wrested power from the Tories.

Owen Jones isn’t the only one who needs reminding that, despite having “mass mobilisations across the country”, in 2017, against a struggling government, Labour fell a woeful 64 seats short of a majority.
Brian Hughes
Cheltenham, Gloucestershire

• Surely Polly Toynbee (This cowardly blunder may have saved us all from Brexit, 11 December) can’t have missed the irony in her suggestion that, if elected, a Labour government would be forced to provide a second EU referendum in order “hold the party together”? Remind me, why did David Cameron hold a referendum and what then happened?
Dr Simon Gibbs
Newcastle upon Tyne

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