Hollow victory

Tony Blair is absolutely right. Not only will electing Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader mean electoral annihilation, it will also signal the end of the Labour Party. Labour need to win Tory voters to gain power.

Will electing Jeremy Corbyn achieve that? Can they be serious? Labour will collapse and the far left elements will be absorbed into assorted peripheral and unelectable fringe parties, nonentities wringing their hands and being “pure” socialists while the poor get poorer.

A new centrist party will emerge in time. This breakdown process would take many years, but it is inevitable. The only happy people will be, for different reasons, the Tories and the SNP. It will, however, be a hollow victory.

We are already experiencing a one-party state in Scotland, with everything that entails.

The disintegration of Labour at UK level would mean a second one-party state in the UK.

We would not even have an effective opposition in Westminster, merely more posturing and self-aggrandisement, as we have now from the SNP members; already in Scotland the only real opposition to SNP hegemony is some sections of the media and, perhaps, the letter pages of the newspapers.

Those deciding the next Labour leader – infiltrators as well as genuine – should have infinitely more than narrow vested interests in mind.

Alexander McKay

New Cut Rigg

Edinburgh