What happened to Labour’s integrity?

Jeremy Corbyn is not the real barrier to Labour’s return to government. Who on earth would ever give power to people whose solution to rejection of their strategies by their former supporters is to muddle the election of a new leader by offering associate party membership to union members and a three quid entrance to Uncle Tom Cobley and all?

They seem incapable of working out that Corbyn is popular because he represents traditional Labour values and priorities. He is obviously sincere in his desire to put these policies into action for the benefit – as he sees it – of the population.

The Labour establishment, however, is concerned only with positions of power, and is willing to jettison all supposed principles to achieve that.

There must surely be among them, and among Labour voters, many who still value socialist principles, which will never be achieved as long as Labour continues to chase votes at any cost.

Where has been their outcry against the hypocrisy of severe austerity for the masses and the extravagance of the “nobles”?

Why the shrug-of-the-shoulders acceptance of a massive increase in the already bloated House of Lords membership, along with a reduction in MPs? Corbyn is glaringly the most appropriate candidate for the leadership.

Robert Dow

Ormiston Road

Tranent

Ian Murray’s insulting remarks about Labour leadership contender Jeremy Corbyn being a pensioner and therefore unsuitable to be a Labour leader suggest he has no principles.

I assume Ian Murray will resign as shadow secretary of state for Scotland if Corbyn wins. Meanwhile, Kezia Dugdale, who also trashed Corbyn, proves she is completely out of touch with reality by proposing that the soon-to-be 1,000 members of the House of Lords should sit in Glasgow rather than be abolished as an antiquated relic of the British establishment and privileged entitlement. No doubt Kezia Dugdale will also step down if Jeremy Corbyn is selected by Labour members.

Janice Thompson

Walter Scott Avenue

Edinburgh

Alexander McKay (Letters, 3 August) asks if I sought to have the SNP campaign letters curtailed when the party was in its ascendancy, and of course the answer is no.

However, whatever could be said about the present 
Labour Party, few lucid thinkers would claim that it is in its ascendancy. John Cleese’s parrot comes to mind.

All over the world people have concluded that socialist theory is a great subject for endless debate among the young, but for those who go out into the world and gain life experience its attractions invariably pale fast.

Leaving the demise of the Labour Party aside, what all this says about popular 21st-century socialist-orientated politics in my native land should make us all pause for very serious thought indeed.

Irvine Inglis

Reston

Berwickshire