Letters: Labour must now demonstrate that it deserves the trust of British voters

SIR – Sir Keir Starmer has been granted his wish by the electorate (“Labour landslide”, report, July 5). It is now incumbent upon him and his party to deliver the change they promised.

Sir Keir must be acutely aware that, should he fail to act on his pledges (as the Conservatives did), the British public will ensure it is Labour that suffers at the next election.

Rob Mason
Nailsea, Somerset

SIR – I find it profoundly depressing that a large section of the British population can vote for change without any real explanation of what that change involves.

Is it really so easy to gain political power in this country?

Barbara Hollman
Stroud, Gloucestershire

SIR – Congratulations to the Labour Party on its victory.

However, let us not lose sight of the reality here. People haven’t turned to Labour; we’ve rejected wholesale the Conservatives and the SNP after a dire few years, and reached out instead primarily to the Liberal Democrats and Reform UK. Labour’s share of the popular vote is virtually unchanged since the last general election.

Our new Government must recognise this. Let’s hope Sir Keir’s promise of change was not empty. He and his party must govern with humility, and for us all.

Martin Smith
Whitby, North Yorkshire

SIR  – Labour won with fewer votes than it got in 2019, when it lost. Its share of the vote was smaller than that of the Tories and Reform UK combined. Turnout was at a near all-time low of about 60 per cent. That means Labour is in power with little more than a fifth of the country having voted for it. It has no popular mandate.

Charles Barrington
Woodbridge, Suffolk

SIR – I don’t like the result of the general election. Can I demand a re-run, just as Sir Keir did after the Brexit referendum?

Alison Levinson 
Hastings, East Sussex

SIR – Well, it’s happened. As expected, the Tories have handed Labour a huge majority.

Let us hope that Prime Minister Starmer does as little with his Commons advantage as Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak did with theirs.

Andrew Pearce
London SE3

SIR  – I wonder if we have now seen a record number of turkeys voting for Christmas.

Peter Stephens
Fakenham, Norfolk

SIR – Many will have noticed how Sir Keir, in his first speech outside 10 Downing Street, stated that his Government would not be burdened by doctrine.

He appears to have forgotten that, only recently, he described himself as a socialist. Or has he already U-turned on that?

Michael Edwards 
Haslemere, Surrey

SIR – I made the daily trip to pick up my Telegraph in the rain. The newsagent greeted me at the door with my paper in hand and the words: “Labour has come – look at the weather.”

Larry Darby
Ferring, West Sussex

SIR – Following the 2019 election I was optimistic that, in my twilight years, this country would be secure, and that the “sunlit uplands” would be reached.

Sadly, things have not turned out that way, and we are now staring into a deep and dark abyss, the dimensions of which will be revealed over the coming months and years.

Perhaps I may be permitted to borrow and adapt the words of Edward Grey, foreign secretary in 1914, thus: “The lamps are going out all over Britain. I shall not see them lit again in my lifetime.”

Christopher Leach
Chalfont St Peter, Buckinghamshire

SIR  – I woke up feeling saddened by the (admittedly predictable) election result. Nevertheless, I then felt an enormous sense of pride when I reflected that this seismic change has been effected peacefully, by simply putting an “X” next to a preferred name on a ballot paper.

What an honour it is to be British and live in this fantastic country.

Basil Young
London W4

SIR – We woke up to a new government. Yet the Bank of England is still run by Andrew Bailey, the Office for Budget Responsibility is still run by Richard Hughes, the NHS is still run by Amanda Pritchard, the Supreme Court is still led by Lord Reed, quangos remain unchanged and the over-powerful Civil Service is as it was.

Andy Tuke
Bristol

SIR – Rishi Sunak said he took full responsibility for the election result, for all that’s worth.

The soul-searching, navel-gazing and witch-hunts will now commence, but the reasons for the defeat are not rocket science: the Conservative Party lost its way completely. This was apparent to all but those in power.

Roger Wilson
Charter Alley, Hampshire

SIR  – While it was typically magnanimous of Mr Sunak to take responsibility for the Tories’ hammering, the real blame lies with the narcissistic Boris Johnson and the lamentably incompetent Liz Truss.

The election result merely confirmed the contempt in which the nation holds these two figures and their acolytes.

Kim Potter
Lambourn, Berkshire

SIR – Poor Conservative Party leadership over the past 10 years is behind the disastrous election result.

David Cameron did not challenge the un-Conservative Blairite settlement and shamefully quit as prime minister when the Brexit referendum he called went against him, causing confusion and delivering the leadership into the hands of the hapless Theresa May. She did not abandon the Blairite settlement either and found she was out of her depth, lost the Tory majority in a snap general election and sank in the parliamentary Brexit shenanigans that followed.

Boris Johnson, who followed, managed to get Brexit over the line and won the 2019 general election, but his charisma could not make up for his laziness, poor organisation and lack of both dedication and personal integrity. His character proved catastrophically unsuited to the Covid outbreak. When this caught up with him, eight weeks were wasted choosing the feckless and short-lived Liz Truss, who had the right ideas but a total inability to deliver them. Rishi Sunak has done his best but lacks political nous and inherited an impossible hand.

These leaders permitted the Conservative Party to lose its ethos and, latterly, its mojo. It has ignored its core supporters, who expect it to stand for small government, low taxes, secure borders, business, free speech and personal liberty. Reform UK has stolen the Conservatives’ clothes, and it is vital that the Tories take the time to select a really good leader who will rebuild the party along genuinely Conservative lines.

Gregory Shenkman
London SW7

SIR – Before and during the election campaign, the term “broad church” was repeatedly used.

The trouble with broad churches is that, inevitably, they disintegrate. I wonder if it will prove any different with this new government.

Simon McIlroy
Croydon, Surrey

SIR – When will the Conservatives learn? Already they have resumed their Left-vs-Right infighting.

Don’t they see that this infighting was the main cause of their downfall? That, and not doing in government what they had promised to do.

Judith Rixon
Bourne, Lincolnshire

SIR – One can only hope that Labour solves the problems of the NHS, as the Conservatives are likely to be in A&E for some considerable time.

John Clark
Hereford

SIR – British citizens are still paying the price for Conservative MPs forcing Margaret Thatcher out of office 34 years ago.

The governments that have followed have been sorely lacking.

Athol Forsyth
Norwich

SIR – Good news: for the first time in 20 years or more we have a genuine conservative voice in the House of Commons – Nigel Farage.

David Higgins
Richmond, Surrey

SIR – I was very sorry to see that some proper Conservatives lost their seats, while several liberal ones retained theirs.
One thing is for sure: the Conservatives and Reform UK have five years to sort themselves out. The people at the top must devise a plan whereby they either merge or work together. Otherwise we will be in for a Labour government not just for five years, but permanently.

In my constituency the combined votes of those two parties comfortably beat the Labour candidate.

Peter Flesher
Halifax, West Yorkshire

SIR – How is it possible in a democracy for a political party to attract 14 per cent of the vote and gain just five seats in Parliament?

Prejudice against Reform, and a distrust of proportional representation, are no excuse for ignoring the flawed and deeply unfair nature of our present electoral system.

Martin Offer 
Bognor Regis, West Sussex

SIR – The idea that the Conservative Party should shift further to the Right in order to combat Reform surely amounts to fighting the last war. That would be the approach of a dominant party trying to head off a brewing insurgency in its space.

Now that Reform has captured the territory, the task before the Conservatives is to provide a notably different Right-wing offer to what Nigel Farage is putting on the table.

David Woodhouse
Nuneaton, Warwickshire

SIR – Immediately after Labour had won the election in 1997, Gordon Brown abolished the right to recoup advance corporation tax. This was a tax raid about which nothing had been said prior to the election, for obvious reasons.

I am therefore curious as to what the new Chancellor has in mind this time. I would not be surprised if Individual Savings Accounts (ISAs) lose their income and exemption from capital gains tax. I wonder how many taxpayers will leave these shores, never to be seen again.

So thank you, Nigel Farage – with Brexit and now Reform UK you have done immense damage to this country. The worst is yet to come, I fear.

David Crawford
Llandudno, Caernarfonshire

SIR – The Conservative Party needs to take a long, hard look at itself. And the first thing it must address is its selection process.

The Tories need to pick people with administrative and organisational skills, rather than career politicians and second-rate lawyers. Cabinet ministers proved unable to run their departments effectively, and the Civil Service was allowed to do what it liked, often in direct opposition to government policy.

Michael Banyard
Charlton Adam, Somerset

SIR – The people of Cheltenham should be ashamed of themselves for not supporting Alex Chalk, who has done more for their town than I suspect the new Liberal Democrat ever will.

Michael Longley
Cheltenham, Gloucestershire

SIR – If there is a prize for the most dignified post-defeat speech at an election count, it must surely go to Penny Mordaunt.

As the song goes, “you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone”. I think the Conservative Party and Ms Mordaunt’s former constituents will discover this soon.

Sandra Jones
Old Cleeve, Somerset

SIR – Let us spare a thought for the Left-wing comedians who have spent the past few years making lazy jokes about the Tories and now find themselves out of work.

They will have to try a bit harder to be funny.

Kevin Harvey
London W5

SIR – The producers of I’m a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here! are going to have a lot of volunteers to take part this year.

Frank Dean
Stockport, Cheshire

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