Letter: Labour turmoil

Sir: Tony Blair packed in no fewer than five rhetorical triads (such as "It is as New Labour that we were elected; it is as New Labour that we have governed; and it is as New Labour that we will continue to govern") in his address to your readership (8 January).

A fondness for this contrived and wearisome device is one of the more venial vices he has inherited from Mr Major, who at least had the excuse of being ill-educated. But the constant harping on the number three evinces a new and sinister religiosity. It comes as no surprise, when, in the third paragraph, he chooses "to define the Third Way in three areas".

If there are any atheist socialists left out there (strange to think how, not so long ago, we might have been forgiven for thinking that we would inherit the earth), I suggest to you that this man is our Nemesis.

MATT CAVANAGH

Oxford