Roots of Labour’s failure to connect with voters

Jonathan Freedland suggests we skip grief at the election results and move on to anger (Labour needs to learn: it’s about power, not gesture politics, Journal, 14 December), and he makes very clear who he is angry with. In this post-election period all the blame and venom seems to be directed at Jeremy Corbyn. But the ex-coalmining families on the council estate that I grew up on, impoverished and barely scraping a living together, have been betrayed not by a socialist-led Labour but by a toxic coalition from the right and liberal wings of the establishment.

First there is the Tory party, with such contempt for ordinary people it lied to them throughout the campaign, then a media elite of TV presenters and journalists who pretended impartiality while peddling distortions, and finally the right wing of Labour who have weaponised antisemitism to undermine Corbyn when the overriding concern of those in the party should be directed at the rise in antisemitism and all other forms of racism in British society.

None of these groups will suffer directly as a consequence of the neoliberal free-market capitalism soon to be unleashed on a divided, mistrustful and misinformed nation. Instead it is the working-class people I spoke to on many doorsteps, who spoke of not being valued, respected or listened to, whose lives will be further diminished as poverty intensifies and the privatisation of public services continues apace. We all need to accept our collective responsibility rather than engage in a futile and spiteful blame game.
Prof Diane Reay
University of Cambridge

• The period of reflection being sought by Jeremy Corbyn to further extend his failed leadership does not need to last beyond the time it takes to read Jonathan Freedland’s brilliant analysis of how the Labour party managed to lose so badly. Corbyn is a stubborn, misguided and incompetent idealist. He should resign immediately.
Paul Cropper
Ramsbottom, Greater Manchester

• Jonathan Freedland expresses “rage” for the election result and blames “those who led the main party of opposition down a blind alley”. Such media commentators write as if the election outcome had nothing to do with them. Gary Younge, in an otherwise fair analysis (Labour won’t win again until it works out why it lost, Journal, 14 December), tells us that “the media are not going anywhere soon … and whoever runs the party next will have to deal with them”. No, Gary, they won’t – you will. If the media have failed to follow their own editors’ codes and to report the issues in an important election in such a way that the electorate is properly informed, it isn’t the Labour party’s job to “deal with it”: it’s yours. If apologies are due to us disappointed voters, could we have some from you lot too, please?
Máire Davies
Cardiff

• Gary Younge is right to say that many of the struggles to come will be extra-parliamentary. A major reason for Labour’s defeat is that the Corbyn project never was the social movement it claimed to be. It failed to prepare the ground for its programme and failed to lead any resistance to the Tories’ redistribution of wealth from poor to rich. If it wants to recover from defeat, it has to transform itself into the tribune of an authentic working-class politics both inside and outside parliament. As Younge makes clear, Corbyn failed to do either.

In so many leave areas Labour has long been little more than a council tax collector. It may not have been responsible for austerity, but it was supine in the face of it. For Labour to turn this around it would need to become what its history shows it is always failing at – to be a focal point of resistance rather than a drag on it.
Nick Moss
London

• Gary Younge says “I did not hear a single voter ask about Owen Smith or pine for Yvette Cooper”. Nor did I, and it’s an important point. But unfortunately I did hear “I can’t vote Labour, I’m a Jew” a few times, and “I’m not voting Labour while Corbyn leads it” many times. I don’t know what the leadership should have done about this intense hostility, but a lesson has to be learned for next time.
Richard Seabrook
Beckenham, London

• Everyone finds it difficult to reflect on the lessons that need to be learned in defeat. A football manager who says “We did everything we should have done on the pitch except putting the ball in the back of the net” needs to remember that putting the ball in the back of the net is the whole point of the game.

A political party that says they did everything except convincing the people to vote for them needs to draw the parallel lesson. To find out what truly went wrong it would be much better to have a proper analysis of the views of people who did not vote Labour than continually hearing from MPs and canvassers: “What I heard on the doorstep was…” Everyone appears to have heard exactly what they believe themselves. It is no way to accurately learn the vital lessons to go forward positively.
Canon Richard Sewell
Jerusalem

• Aditya Chakrabortty (This week’s meltdown has been building for decades, Journal, 14 December) says Labour needs to “renew its contract with its base”. In fact Labour should be its base. There is still the idea that Labour is for the workers, rather than being the workers. Isn’t that the problem New Labour and Corbynism share? If family, community, country is not at the centre of things then there’s no point. Because when the shit hits the fan, lay-down-your-life commitment is to family (mine), community (us around here), country (land and law).

Before we all shudder at the -phobias of it all: Labour is liberal (meaning each to their own, mind your own business); social (meaning not selfish or antisocial); international (meaning neither transnational nor nationalist). But real commitment is to family, community, country – and if we in Labour do not rebuild from there, things can only get very much worse. Why not start by asking ex-Labour leave voters in Blyth to edit a special edition of the Guardian?
George Howard
Richmond, London

• I am writing as the first chief executive of One NorthEast, the regional development agency for the north-east of England, which was established in 1999 and abolished in 2011. I often agree with much that Aditya Chakrabortty writes, but I must take issue with his airy dismissal of Tony Blair’s and Gordon Brown’s approach to the economy.

They established the regional development agencies, and in the north-east we addressed the fundamentals of the regional economy across a broad agenda. Yes, the development of skills was a part, but the objective was to lay the foundations of a new economy. The first Industrial Revolution was created by ideas and innovation, and delivered by a skilled workforce, and we were looking to develop new industries as well as supporting existing ones which had a future.

That was beginning to pay off by a narrowing of the economic gap between the north-east and the rest of the country when we were abolished by the Conservative government.
Mike Collier
Shiptonthorpe, East Riding of Yorkshire

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