Like Zoe Williams (I will never leave Labour – but my new membership card makes me uneasy, 9 October), I was disconcerted to be alerted to the ersatz patriotism of the new Labour membership card, with its incorporation of the union jack. On the reverse, the new heading “country first” dominates.
I understand the intention was to signify putting the interests of country above party, but this is nowhere explained on the card itself or in the accompanying email. In the absence of context other than the flag, the phrase conjures up the nativist, isolationist and white supremacist tendencies exemplified by the Australia and America First movements, culminating in the resurrection of the latter by Donald Trump.
Labour unaccountably also seems to have overlooked the resonance with Britain First, words adopted by an offshoot of the fascist BNP and allegedly the inspiration of the killer of Jo Cox.
It is particularly unfortunate that the introduction of this apparently nationalist framing coincides with the appalling carnage in Israel-Palestine. The latter demonstrates the utter failure of a unilaterally imposed settlement to protect the rights of all the people in the area. Labour should be demanding an international response which can never be based on the parochialism of “country first”.
Dr Anthony Isaacs
London
• Zoe Williams makes excellent points about her uneasiness with Labour’s new membership card. Putting a union flag on a membership card wouldn’t have been my first stylistic choice for a party that absolutely must take votes from the SNP to win a majority at the next general election. Perhaps the party has also forgotten that Irish citizens living in the UK are entitled to vote in general elections and many of us, myself included, are Labour members. The flag won’t change my voting intention, but having it thrust on me is something of a sickener.
Jess Ní Cheallaigh
London
• Zoe Williams illustrates one of the problems with democracy in Britain today, when she writes: “Just to be clear: there is no way I’m voting anything other than Labour, I am definitely a member of this party, there is nothing on God’s green earth that would make me leave. Nothing.”
Cleaving without thought or reflection to one party (my parents, both lifelong Conservatives, were just the same) is the kind of mindless tribalism that permits parties to abandon their core principles when expedient, safe in the belief that their faithful adherents will follow regardless even when – as with Williams’s reservations about the motto “country first” on her membership card – serious questions should be asked, both of the party and of one’s allegiance to it.
Edward Collier
Cheltenham, Gloucestershire
• I will never leave the Labour party, never. Not even if they replace the words Labour party with Reform party, or just the union jack, not even if they stopped being a political party and converted into a small business in Basingstoke selling handcrafted Indonesian loofahs, not even if they amalgamated with the Conservative party and called themselves the Tory Urban Reform Delegation.
Never, never, not even if they instigated a murderous war in which hundreds of thousands died, allied themselves with self-serving dictatorships and prostrated themselves, at every opportunity, before money and power. Never. It’s my identity, it’s dinner parties, it’s my friends. There is nothing else, the alternative doesn’t exist.
Richard Morris
Bath
• I agree 100%, Zoe. After years of hanging on to my membership by my fingernails, it’s ironic that the new card has nearly tipped me over the edge – nearly. But, like Zoe, I’ll hang on. It’s our party too.
Catherine Hemmings
York
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