Your editorial (2 December) on the Labour victory in the Chester byelection suggests that the swing to the party was not sufficiently large to ensure the seats needed for it to form a government. That is at odds with your suggestion for remedy that Keir Starmer should throw away caution and propose radical policies which would immediately solve the accumulated problems of the economy.
Cautious voters – and they have been cautious in limiting the swing in Chester to less than 14% – will not find any “offer of real redistribution to households with collapsing incomes” immediately on Labour coming to power credible, because policy drafted without consultation with civil servants about means of delivery often backfires owing to unanticipated consequences.
Instead of writing out detailed policy prescriptions at such an early stage in the electoral cycle, Starmer would do better to demonstrate by the company he keeps that his leadership team is committed to a credible direction of travel to undo steadily a 40-year trend of the capture of a disproportionate share of the benefits of economic growth by the few. The share of gross wages accruing to the top 5% of earners, having steadily declined since 1949, began rising again in 1979, reaching 31% in 2007.
Reversing that trend at an accelerated pace should be possible, but any details of policy prescribed two years before a general election are not believable.
Shanti Chakravarty
Bangor
• It’s always tempting to generalise from the outcome of a byelection, and Labour’s victory in Chester is no exception. The eloquently damning verdict in a letter from a lifelong Tory voter who will no longer support them, cited in your post-election editorial, is worrying because she declined to put her support behind any party.
It is understandable that senior Labour figures consistently tell us that they will present fully costed policies closer to the election, and that for now the focus must be on opposing the government and holding it to account. However, there is clearly scope for testing out public opinion beyond a few focus groups, by making a bold move to undo the failed privatisation of the water industry (Revealed: more than 70% of English water industry is in foreign ownership, 30 November).
“Take back control”, the Brexit-defining slogan, could have a great chance of rehabilitation if Labour began a serious pre-election campaign to give us back mutual ownership of the provision of clean water and the safe discharge of waste.
Les Bright
Exeter
• Your editorial is right to suggest that Keir Starmer needs some more robust policies on the economy, perhaps similar to the ones he had when he stood as Labour leader. The Chester byelection, however, has a wider point. It was the Tories’ worst performance in the seat since 1832. That was the year of the Great Reform Act, and the subsequent general election was a Whig landslide. The act, which started the long process of turning Britain into a parliamentary democracy, was designed to fend off the likely alternative – a revolution.
When the governing party can only secure 22% in an election for a seat that it held for generations but is unwilling to call a general election, there is a democratic deficit. If this is not addressed in parliament, it will be in workplaces and on the streets.
Keith Flett
Tottenham, London
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