Labour’s troubles leave voters with a ballot box dilemma

Nesrine Malik rightly warns the Labour party against alienating its leftwing activists and supporters (Starmer? Sunak? Millions know they are different but still feel alienated. Ignore that at your peril, 3 June). But in a liberal democracy, radical economic and social reform cannot be achieved without winning hearts and changing minds, and this takes time: it cannot be done in the space of a six-week election campaign. As Antonio Gramsci, the Italian communist leader, observed: “The counting of votes is the final ceremony of a long process.”

The trouble with Labour – one of the troubles – is that with its focus on fighting or preparing to fight elections, it ignores what Gramsci called the “war of position” in civil society: the struggle to challenge and change entrenched and widespread habits, practices, attitudes and beliefs that obstruct or inhibit progress towards a fairer, greener, happier, less divided and more democratic social order. Unless and until the party develops the capacity to provide such moral and intellectual leadership throughout society and at all times, not just during elections, its room for manoeuvre, in or out of government, is bound to remain tightly constricted.
David Purdy
Stirling

• Nesrine Malik states that the “world isn’t set to look much different once the Tories are gone”. I remember exactly the same being said by some leftwing commentators in the run-up to the 1997 election – particularly after Gordon Brown committed to following the Tory spending plans.

Our family’s life with three young children was changed beyond recognition by that Labour government. My kids were educated in smaller classes, without buckets to catch the leaks; we weren’t scraping around at the end of every month for money to buy food; the health service, for the first and only time in my life, was properly funded. The only time the world doesn’t look any different is when Tory governments are voted back in time and again. Proportional representation won’t change that.
Andrew Pellow
Huddersfield

• Nesrine Malik was entirely correct in her analysis of the state of the Labour party. I was a constituency chairman and Labour district councillor in the 1970s and left the party over the Iraq war decision. I rejoined the party two years ago to help get rid of this Tory government, which has ruined the country.

To my chagrin, I found that Labour has been transformed into a Leninist-style party where democratic centralism prevails. Ordinary members have no say or power in the party and are just electoral fodder charged with getting the party into power. We cannot select candidates, suggest policy or decide on party strategy in our constituencies. This leads to apathy, cynicism and alienation. Countless democratic socialists have warned of the dangers of overcentralisation. Power is a means to an end not an end in itself. Sir Keir’s obsession with appearing “nice” to soft Tories will not change Britain into the decent, fair society we so urgently need and require.
Clive Tempest
Westbury-on-Severn, Gloucestershire

• Nesrine Malik perfectly described my dilemma when I go into the ballot box next month. At 76, I have voted Labour at every election, not out of family loyalty, but a profound belief in the underlying principles of democratic socialism, which has only been strengthened by my life experience working in schools, where so many children were failed from birth in so many ways.

However, this time, I really do feel that Labour doesn’t speak to my cares and concerns any more. Where are the politicians who will put principle before power and ambition, and have the courage to promise even just a spoonful of jam – not eternally tomorrow, but today? Where is a forensic critique of where the coalition got it so wrong with “austerity”? Not only do Labour politicians increasingly sound like Tories, they don’t even attack them where they could.

I am considering whether to spoil my ballot paper with a succinct reason why I am not voting Labour. It would very much echo the reasoning in Nesrine’s article. Thank you for giving me a voice the current electoral system never has.
Julia Williams
Stockport

• Nesrine Malik excuses the self-indulgence of those who are proposing to abandon Labour because, to get into government, they are accommodating to those of their fellow voters who aren’t as radical as them (or me). In quoting Ralph Nader, she illustrates the folly of such solipsism. By taking votes from Al Gore in the 2000 US presidential election, he and those who voted for him gave us George W Bush, the Iraq war and prevented Gore from tackling climate change. Those who feel alienated do, indeed, have to vote for the least bad option, and avoid a peril of their own making; and then to consider what they can do – not just what the Labour leadership can do – to change the views of an electorate that, in the last election, voted in these Conservatives led by Boris Johnson.
Ed McDonnell
Manchester

• Nesrine Malik’s excellent article points to what I think will be, in retrospect, one of the most depressing aspects of this election – low voter turnout. Unenthused and worse by the big parties, the actual voting electorate may well set a new low for the past 100 years. And it is into such spaces that populists like Donald Trump step.
Graham Walsh
Wymondham, Norfolk

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