John Harris rightly warns of the spread of rightwing populism on both sides of the Atlantic and the risk to Labour’s majority at the next election, given Reform UK’s strong showing in many Labour seats (Populism has plenty of false promises to solve Britain’s problems. Labour will need to expose them, 22 July). He calls for a senior Labour politician to expose the scam of “a party founded and led by privately educated opportunists” presenting itself as “the voice of ordinary people”, though it has to be said that this presented no barrier to the success of the Etonians who achieved Tory victories in 2010 and 2019.
Addressing populism will require both a focus on improving living standards and developing a convincing story around the bigger policy areas of tackling inequality, restoring public services and preventing environmental catastrophe, all of which will take time. It is therefore doubly unfortunate that Labour’s leadership, in no current danger, has sought instead to marginalise its own internal critics, particularly over their opposition to the two-child benefit cap. In losing the Labour whip on an issue of principle, the rebels can count themselves in the company of such Labour luminaries as Aneurin Bevan and Michael Foot. When Labour reverses its current policy, they may well, by analogy with the anti-Franco fighters who opposed fascism before it was a mainstream cause, come to be lauded as premature anti-austerians, who showed the way to defeat populism.
Dr Anthony Isaacs
London
• Keir Starmer might well have as his aim “nothing less than national renewal”, but where is the evidence in his speeches, policies or manifesto to suggest that it is a realistic one? Is it really telling, as John Harris suggests, that the term “working class” is suddenly back in Labour’s vocabulary, when the word “inequality” appeared only once in its manifesto? Exposing Faragism “for the scam that it is” will not be as difficult as getting people who have been left behind, hit even harder by higher interest rates and working poverty, and relying on food banks to survive, to believe it. The only way is for Starmer to help their lives improve with, in his phrase, “deeds not words” long before the next election, not waiting for wealth to trickle down when the economy grows.
It can be done, but not by waiting for his ideal world: the scrapping of the two-child benefit cap and sorting public sector pay, both crucial but eminently affordable, must take place soon. A substantial increase in the minimum wage, in return for keeping the “full expensing” policy and low corporate tax level for businesses, would indicate some determination to make substantive change. A rent cap as well as the ending of no-fault evictions is needed. Starmer must show whose side he is on: if millions feel they are still being left behind in 2029, there will be only one person to blame.
Bernie Evans
Liverpool
• Josephine Quinn, in How the World Made the West, argues that “larger networks of world trade and diplomacy fell away for a century or more, and increasing value was placed on the persecution and exclusion of the socially and culturally undesirable”. This was populism in the 14th century. The causes? A pandemic (the Black Death) and climate change. Perhaps one should not be surprised. Under pressure, humanity can lose its magnanimity, and tiny-mindedness becomes a virtue.
Jerry Stuart
London
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