If the Labour Party has truly learnt its lesson, it’ll ignore Tony Blair’s intervention

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As someone who wrote about what a disaster Jeremy Corbyn would be soon after the surprise win of the “anyone on the left” candidate, I am equally despondent whenever an intervention from Tony Blair rears its ugly head.

I yelled into the wind about the predictability of a Labour loss under Ed Miliband and found the collective surprise at the defeat astonishing. I wrote about the need for Labour to take time over choosing a new leader. Nope. They leapt enthusiastically out of the frying pan into the fire.

If those still stained by the horrors of the illegal invasion of Iraq try and push themselves forward now that Labour is on life support, it will do no good. Some of us have memories. Some of us are entirely fed up of the inevitability of predictable failure when ordinary people have been suffering for so long.

So, maybe this time, rather than rushing to more self-harm, Labour could stop listening to establishment white men and listen to this old black granny. There is no hurry. You just put another old Etonian – a man who many believe openly despises ordinary people – into office for another half decade.

Get an interim leader. Spend some time licking those wounds. Work out what the party is actually about and then work out how to elect someone who can lead and unite the London trendies with the traditional Labour voter. Or pack up.

Amanda Baker
Edinburgh

We’ve made our bed

If the people of England want to vote like turkeys for Christmas, that is their inalienable democratic right; but in the more rational air of the European mainland I and others are predicting that the coming months will see a mounting exodus over the white cliffs of the disillusioned and disaffected as Boris Johnson forces his country into a brutal divorce from the EU and a shotgun wedding with Trumpland.

Five years of a Johnsonite regime will see increasing poverty, inequality and deprivation; a widening gulf between the haves and have-nots; a deliberate degradation of public services, including the NHS; growing social discontent; a relentless erosion of civil and human rights; the suppression of dissent; and rising crime fuelled by all these factors.

No doubt Johnson will be relying on his 20,000 new police recruits and 10,000 new prison places to deter any serious popular unrest. If not, then he can always advise the Queen to approve a state of emergency and call in the paras to quell any incipient revolt.

I know of three British expats who are in such despair at the prospects for their country that they are already planning to file citizenship applications in two EU member states.

Those who placed their X by the party led by a cynical, callous, duplicitous and mendacious egocentric will have no one but themselves to blame for what’s coming.

As the saying goes: “You have made your bed, so now you can lie on it.”

Adrian Marlowe
The Hague, Netherlands

Johnson’s leadership

The media coverage of the Nato summit in London is a timely reminder of the peaceful conditions that Britain has enjoyed. With 74 years passed since the Second World War, the vast majority of the population has had very little direct contact with the horrors of war. It is heartening therefore to hear Boris Johnson speaking about the solidarity of nations against global threats. In the face of this, we have SNP persistently calling for pulling out of Trident and Labour being at best very woolly about foreign policy and the importance of the military.

While these messages may be politically expedient, they are ill-advised and short-sighted. Political parties and leaders come and go, but the balance of world powers and the crucial part that Britain has to play is a long term objective that none of us should lose sight of, and something that we owe to ourselves and to future generations.

Richard Steven
Glasgow

NHS failings

Barely a week goes by but we hear of more NHS failings. This time it’s in Great Yarmouth.

All we ever get seem to be the standard, trite insincerities: “we’re sorry”; “our thoughts are with you”; “we’ll look at what we’ve learnt.’’

We never hear of (often very well paid) executives or senior managers being disciplined or losing their jobs

I believe that the responsibility ultimately resides at the top of these trusts, yet no one appears to ever be held accountable.

Dr Anthony Ingleton
Sheffield

The great Royal bake off

UK headlines have been non-stop Brexit for so long, so it is some light relief to read that the future British king and his wife participated in a Christmas television special with the celebrity cook Mary Berry.

UK media mavens love to grasp any tidbit of life inside the royal palaces, and delightedly reported that among young Prince Louis’s first spoken words was “Mary”, as he supposedly recognised Berry’s face from cookbooks his mother used. Just imagine if another world-famous British chef and cookbook writer named Gordon Ramsay was a favourite of his mother; then Louis’s first word may have been a different one with four letters.

Bernie Smith
Parksville, Canada