It is not simply that the candidates for the Labour leadership are “talking analogue” (Editorial, 25 July), it is that they are following the same hymn sheet. What’s missing is any recognition that there is an alternative economic theory to the neoliberal one apparently held by all, with the possible exception of Jeremy Corbyn.
Yes, this alternative economic theory is grounded in the work of Keynes but it is made relevant to today in the works of Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz, Amartya Sen and Simon Wren-Lewis among others. It recognises some so far unheard-of truths. It recognises that currency-issuing governments cannot run out of money, and that the purpose of tax is to give the currency value, to redistribute income, to deter bad practices, and to highlight to the electorate the cost of some services. Therefore deficits or surpluses are neither good nor bad, but simply an accounting statement of the outcome of the government’s current taxing and spending regime. The success or failure of a government should be judged by its performance against its objectives, put forward by the party at the general election, which would include the levels of employment, median income, inflation and inequality that it wants to achieve.
If all parties operate within the same economic framework, all the electorate is left with is a decision based on where each party stands on the spectrum of austerity.
Dr Graham Hunter
London
Martin Kettle asserts that “the left is unusually bad at asking itself really difficult questions about its approach to politics” ( Opinion, 24 July). One can equally suggest that the political commentariat is really bad at getting its head around the possibility that many people profoundly disagree with the neoliberal philosophy whose supporters amuse themselves to describe as the “centre ground”. This is inevitably accompanied by a rewriting of history to support the view that Labour can only ever win by imitating the Tories.
In 1992, Black Wednesday caused the electorate to think that it may have made a big mistake by re-electing the Major government. From that moment on, opinion polls showed that the Tories were on borrowed time. Against that background, a prior purge of Labour’s left wing had prepared the ground for a well-funded rightwing putsch which installed the “New Labour” Messiah and his acolytes at the head of the party. This ensured that a change of government would not presage any harm to the neoliberal project.
Given that it is governments that lose elections, not oppositions that win them, a party well to the left of Blair and co would have walked into power in 1997. Could it not be fear of a similar scenario that is causing abject panic among the Blairites, accompanied by the inevitable monstering of Corbyn?
Alisdair McNicol
Wallasey, Merseyside
Jonathan Freedland (Opinion, 25 July) seems to be part of a Guardian orthodoxy that a Corbyn victory would be disastrous for Labour and the country. He sees Corbyn’s popularity as stemming from an identity problem, principally of the young whose memories do not stretch to Labour’s wilderness years. Yet his analysis of anti-Blairism lacks depth.
By successfully selling “pragmatism”, and prioritising power over integrity, Blair helped to wreck the independence of thought of a generation of Labour politicians. Blair embraced Margaret Thatcher’s Tina – there is no alternative – to the market fundamentalism that followed the breakup of the Soviet Union and in its turn created the crash of 2007/8. He and his allies pushed their party onto the privatisation train which under Miliband’s guidance is still hurtling towards the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, the grim reaper of profit from what remains of the solidarity state.
Many of us, in Scotland, Wales and – hallelujah – it now seems in England too, recognise the need for a progressive alliance that can finally move away from the greed economics of Thatcher, Blair, Clegg and Cameron. It is our caring about issues above party and short-term gaining of power, that marks us out as anti-tribal. So we must also link strongly with the 21st-century imperative for a low-carbon economy and environmental renewal. The general election result interrupted our hopes. Whether or not Jeremy Corbyn wins the Labour leadership, his gaining of mass support has given us new reasons for optimism.
Tony Booth
Cambridge
Jonathan Freedland is patronising and insulting to young people, older people and older people still. First, many of Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters are not young, not needing identity, absolutely sure of their politics, with long experience and with greater depth than obviously he has. Second, why does he want to put down, marginalise and alienate young people? Whether Jeremy Corbyn wins the leadership election or not, the people supporting him do so for the policies he espouses and promises to work for; policies that serve the interests of ordinary people, and, incidentally, have been shown to have popular mass support. If elections are not about policy, nobody should waste our time with them. We don’t need more sham democracy.
Diane Randall
Bromyard, Herefordshire
I am surprised that most commentators are intent on painting Jeremy Corbyn as representing a step backwards to the 1980s rather than the inevitable direction for the future. The Greens, the SNP, Occupy movement, the Spanish Indignados and Greek Syriza are not alone in championing an alternative to austerity and neoliberalism. Nobel-prizewinning economists Elinor Ostrom and Joseph Stiglitz have for some time been pointing the way to what Paul Mason calls nascent postcapitalism (Welcome to a new way of living, 18 July).
The ecosocialist Green party has trebled its membership and then its vote in the general election in May. No one needs reminding what the leftwing SNP achieved in Scotland. As Mhairi Black pointed out in her maiden speech to the House of Commons, the majority of people who have deserted the Labour party have done so because it has betrayed its socialist principles. The SNP, she said, “triumphed on a wave of hope that there was something different, something better to the Thatcherite neoliberal policies that are produced from this chamber” and she called on all MPs on the opposition benches to unite in following the “signposts to a better society”. Last month, Green MP Caroline Lucas and former Lib Dem leader Paddy Ashdown also called for “progressive pacts” between parties.
Under a Corbyn-led Labour party there would be a real chance of the progressive parties in British politics working together to lead this country into the postcapitalist future. In many constituencies, like mine, there are always more votes for the progressive parties combined than for the Tory incumbent. Under the current electoral system, candidates from a united left would appear to be the only way Labour could get back into power, albeit with some kind of agreement with other progressive parties. Its policymakers are mistaken if they think they will attract many people back to Labour with Tory-lite Blairite policies from the past, especially in Scotland.
Pat Marsh
Secretary, Kent Green party
As long as we accept the current form of global capitalism as the best option for an economy such as the UK, I regret to say that the Tories are probably the most effective party to run it. Of course, we have to accept high levels of inequality, an elitist education system, propaganda from an almost wholly rightwing press, undermining union power, access to justice biased towards the rich, reduction of state services, etc, but we do get to keep some level of material security with only a modest decline in standards of living. The chances of root and branch change to how we run our economy are zero. This leaves a sad, but inevitable, choice for Labour: either to be a Tory-lite party à la Blair/Mandelson, elected when the Tories mess up or get stale, or become completely irrelevant. Much as I admire Mr Corbyn, I fear he represents the irrelevant option.
Jim Pettman
Port de Castelfranc, Anglars-Juillac, France
Right now Labour is not electing a prime minister. It is electing a leader of the opposition.
Ego-driven, PR-manicured politicians are not what we need. Conviction and two-way communication is the priority.
Labour has to work out how to restore social inclusion and productivity in the face of the rentier and exclusively investor forms of modern capitalism. Corbyn’s view is not a bad place to start. Someone who speaks from the party’s founding vision is better placed to update it than those who never had it in the first place. He has pledged to build the party collectively from all its strands. If he is elected, then those who differ from him should accept places on his team and contribute to a creative opposition that can eventually take government under whatever leader has emerged by then.
Tim Dyce
London
As one of the many members of the Labour party badly bruised in the Militant Tendency days, my view has always been that there could be no hope for the party except within the range of moderate policies which hitherto distinguished us from the Tories. But Robert Bunting (Letters, 24 July) perceptively shows how the last five years have moved the foundations on which the party has previously built its policies. So Harriet Harman didn’t want to be identified as the party associated with the benefit culture? I do. I want to be identified with a party whose main focus is support for the weak and the disadvantaged.
The Tories always manage to determine the outcome of the dialogue by letting their media friends choose the vocabulary. From “Labour’s deficit” to “benefit scroungers” we have let the Tories have their own way in every part of the debate, because we were frightened that if we said what we felt we would lose the middle ground.
I am happy for Jeremy Corbyn to be the leader of a rump party which, having lost its right wing, will be well placed, in 10 or 15 years, to lead a radical movement that may win back the rights and protections stolen from us by the anti-democratic movements funded in every European state by the power and influence of the big corporations.
Jack Heery
Birkenhead, Wirral
I remember when Labour won in 1964 and I felt great hope and optimism that the radicalism of the 1945 Labour government would return. And yes, Harold Wilson did offer us a vision of hope and change. However I also remember that from 1976 onward Labour submitted to the neoliberal economics of the IMF. It was that betrayal of its natural supporters that led to the Thatcher victory in 1979. The Blair years were a response to the Tories’ growing unpopularity and internal divisions, and initially did offer hope but then followed the neoliberal route of privatisation and outsourcing. The invasion of Iraq on the coat-tails of the US was the final straw for many resulting in a huge loss of members. The election of Ed Miliband as leader, the catastrophic election result in 2015 and the appearance of Jeremy Corbyn in the leadership election have all contributed to many ex-members rejoining combined with many new young members joining for the first time. Young people have been inspired by someone who offers a different vision to the traditional party hacks with the same grey sameness.
Corbyn offers an opportunity to reclaim the Labour party and to offer a genuine choice to voters. He has also created a future generation of activists who have engaged with politics for the first time, not with a view to securing a safe parliamentary seat but with a view to changing the world. I won’t be around to see the results but I too am filled with hope for the future and will be doing all I can to ensure victory for Jeremy in his leadership campaign.
David Heywood
Alderford, Norfolk