Until something better comes along, it’s Corbyn for me

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The winner of the Labour leadership contest is set to be announced following a ballot of members at a special conference on September 24 (AFP/Getty)

Ryan Curran invites us to vote against Corbyn. Smith is mentioned at the end, apparently as an afterthought, as though Ryan is reluctant to remind us exactly who the alternative is before we’ve finished reading his rehash of the same old stories.

Much of what Curran says I agree with, but I’ve still voted for Corbyn. The PLP have not even begun to address the problems which gave rise to Corbyn’s victory last year, and show no sign of doing so. Instead we’ve endured a year of the shabbiest kind of politics you can have in a democracy, and then they give us Owen Smith. I can’t begin to express my anger about this, I lack a decent vocabulary for it.

I also wonder what Curran imagines the press would have done to Smith if he’d attempted to keep half of the promises he’s made during his campaign. Corbyn may be incompetent, but his biggest crime is that he’s a socialist.

I don’t believe Owen Smith, so I’ve voted against him. I would be delighted to vote for someone who I could look up to and admire, but in the meantime I’ll stick with Corbyn.

John Burgess

Address supplied

Owen Smith is concerned that a victory for Jeremy Corbyn in the leadership contest, coupled with Theresa May’s recent Damascene conversion to socialism, would consign the Labour party to irrelevance. Smith questions why the public would buy May’s “pale facsimile of the Labour Party” instead of the real thing; “Don’t buy Pepsi” he thunders, “buy Coca-Cola”.

The delicious, unwitting irony! For Smith’s attempt to position himself as a “radical” alternative to Jeremy Corbyn is only marginally less ridiculous than May’s endeavours to position the nasty party as the party of social justice. And if, as Smith claims, Jeremy Corbyn is failing to provide a powerful opposition to the Tories, then why are both politicians so keen to plagiarise him?

Like rival Elvis impersonators faithfully copying the King’s lyrics while merely mouthing the words, both May and Smith fail to grasp that most audiences prefer the original. And while Corbyn’s policies may be imitated, his authenticity cannot, for he embodies the ethical principles that he has always espoused, earning him credibility that few politicians today inspire.

Conversely Smith appears incongruent; he claims to want to listen to the grass roots, yet ignores the wishes of the membership; he admires Blair’s policies yet declares himself to be a socialist; he positions himself as anti-austerity yet abstained on the Tories brutal welfare bill. Furthermore, his Machiavellian attempts to undermine Corbyn contrast starkly with Corbyn’s dignity and fairness.

We get the measure of politicians from the congruence between their deeds and their words; integrity, consistency and genuine conviction all matter. To paraphrase Bevan, Smith’s recently acquired boyhood hero, listening to Smith is like “paying a visit to Woolworth’s: everything in its place and nothing above sixpence.”

Andy Halewood

Bradford on Avon

Japan warns of Brexit’s damaging effect on British car plants

The most ominous note sounding for Britain at the G20 summit was a reminder from Japan that tariff-free access to the single market is absolutely essential for its British car plants. In one of the great examples of turkeys voting for Christmas the people of Sunderland, Swindon and Burnaston, believing Brexit to be risk-free, voted overwhelmingly to leave.

The fact is Nissan, Honda and Toyota were originally tempted to use these towns because components could be imported from the EU, assembled and exported back tariff free. The document also warns of “great turmoil” if EU citizens cannot freely travel between and stay in the UK.

Claims that German car manufacturers can prevent a tariffs contest are naïve – the World Trade Organisation model and Theresa May’s migration red lines make them unavoidable.

John Cameron

St Andrews

Brexit voters who point to the better than expected economic figures to show that leaving the EU will not be a problem are like someone jumping from a 60-storey building and at floor 58 saying “look I told you it was fine and the view is fantastic.”

Do those who voted to remain have a duty to use all legitimate means to stop others jumping given that most informed advice is that we cannot fly unaided, or are we being selfish as we have to jump too and the landing is likely to be hard and painful?

R Alliott

Address supplied

Private and public education

I am honoured to Chair a truly talented and determined set of Governors and staff team in a non-selective secondary school. We are funded in the East Riding of Yorkshire at the lowest rate per pupil in the UK at the moment, around £3,800 per pupil. We achieved 80 per cent A* – C at GCSE this year. This is the third year of improvement in a row. Our “competition”, the local public school with fees of £15,000 won’t discuss their GCSE figures. We should have the equivalent funding so that all of our children can get their fair share.

John Sinclair

East Yorkshire