Polly Toynbee is right to highlight Theresa May’s “game-playing chicanery” (Corbyn is rushing to embrace Labour’s annihilation, 19 April). But for Labour to have opposed her call for a June election would have shown contempt for the many working-class leave voters and abandoned them to three more years of austerity and its attendant inequalities – which lay at the root of their disillusionment with established politics and support for Brexit. A June election will at least give the electorate an opportunity to vote for a set of progressive social democratic politics that have the potential to enhance social justice.
Mike Stein
Pudsey, West Yorkshire
• If the Tories are allowed to win this election the result will be devastating for most ordinary people and all those in need in this country. The main aim of any self-respecting Labour voter should be to unite behind Jeremy Corbyn, stop all the infighting and personality assassination and get behind a campaign that talks about the values at the heart of Labour’s manifesto.
We know that if the Tories win another five years, that will be the end of social justice, the NHS, environmental controls, workers’ rights and a decent future for our children.
Maggie Bernstein
Wivenhoe, Essex
• We are back to 1974. Tory prime minister Edward Heath, with a reasonable majority, calls a snap election on who rules the country. Labour party, following its previous defeat, was committed to a far more leftwing programme than at any time in its history. Two manifesto promises: the renegotiation of terms with the common market, and a fundamental shift in the balance of power and wealth in favour of working people and their families. The result: Labour won the largest number of seats.
Phil Tate
Edinburgh
• Despite the media hype, Labour enters the election on one of its most moderate programmes in memory. Back comes income tax reform, support for comprehensive state education, renationalisation of the railways, an end to privatisation in the NHS, an increase in the minimum wage, and support for a peaceful solution in Syria.
Gone are the policy hangovers of the Thatcher years. Labour is, at last, trying to win back the middle ground, vacated since the early 80s. It has a spring in its step and its leader is looking more and more like Clem Attlee, who was told he didn’t have the charisma of Churchill. Let’s hope that 2017 becomes another 1945.
Dr Mike Squires
London
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