It might have escaped Owen Jones’s notice, but the radical socialist policies that he and – incidentally – I espouse have signally failed to command enough national support to gain a majority in a general election (After the reshuffle, Blairites dominate Starmer’s shadow cabinet. That’s bad news for the rest of us, 4 September).
I’m assuming that he can remember that Jeremy Corbyn’s version of socialism was defeated twice. Consequently, we have continued to suffer the depravities of Conservative government since Gordon Brown’s narrow defeat in 2010.
The truth is simple. Ideological purity aside, only Keir Starmer’s team offers hope, action and progress for the poor, needy and dispossessed. It may not be all that the left desires, but it undoubtedly is the only option for the most vulnerable in our society.
For the desperate, the marginalised, the forgotten, so-called “Blairite Labourism” is so much better than another term of Conservative cuts, cronyism and contempt for those most in need. Get behind the party, Owen, and work hard for a Labour victory.
Martyn Taylor
London
• Owen Jones hits the nail squarely on the head when he writes that Keir Starmer’s brand of politics offers no meaningful answer to a nation defined by crisis. Is the point in voting for Labour just to get rid of the Tories? The Labour leadership team currently offers no way out for people trapped in poverty or lacking in job security.
Young people need hope that they can afford a university education, or a secure job that allows them to progress in life. As much as I want to see the back of this government, I see no point in voting for a Labour government, as it is not offering anything radical that will change the country.
Stuart Finegan
Lewes, East Sussex
• Both your editorial (The Guardian view on the UK falling apart: Labour must reject the orthodoxy that caused it to crumble, 4 September) and Owen Jones are right to be concerned that the Labour party is disappearing down a neoliberal rabbit hole. Unwilling to challenge the inequalities of market economics, Labour is only left with the hope of a level of growth that seems increasingly unlikely. A pluralist economics would recognise the weaknesses of a market that encourages greed and opportunism, while people drown in debt and a cost of living crisis. It would also be aware of the extent that the market relies on state investment and spending – witness the massive state rescues in the 2007-08 financial crisis and the pandemic.
Neoliberals may reject this as believing in magic money trees, but the demonstrated power of the state to create and circulate such huge sums of money must be the key to an economics based on fairness and social justice. The aim would be to create true wealth as wellbeing – what could be called “wellth”.
Prof Mary Mellor
Newcastle upon Tyne
• While I understand the importance of Keir Starmer wanting to bring more people with experience of government into his shadow cabinet, the demotion of Lisa Nandy is regrettable. She has been a champion of those parts of the UK that have been overlooked by Tory-led governments over the last 13 years and was effective in challenging Michael Gove about the failure of the Tory government to take levelling up seriously.
Matthew Ryder
Buckden, Cambridgeshire
• The former New York governor Mario Cuomo once said: “You campaign in poetry and govern in prose.” Where is the poetry under Keir Starmer?
Philip Clayton
London
• Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.
