Labour has rarely won alone – it should not rule out a Lib-Lab pact

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Though the Labour Party may need to rely on the Liberal Democrats for support in a UK with PR, this wouldn’t be much different from the historical norm (PA/Getty)

Having read John Rentoul’s article on electoral reform, I can’t help but notice that he upholds a series of positions incompatible with deeper analysis.

Given how Labour and Liberal cooperation dates as far back as the Herbert Gladstone and Ramsay Macdonald pact of 1903 (or even further if one includes the Lib-Lab MPs of late Victorian Britain), and has continued throughout the 20th century (including in devolved governments in Scotland and Wales), it is strange the Mr Rentoul selects 2010 as year zero, and seems to ignore the historical context of his chosen time period.

In 2010, Gordon Brown was an unpopular incumbent PM who was leading a party that had been in power for over a decade and was dogged by scandals and the shadow of the Iraq war. A Liberal Democrat Party that spent many years making itself an opponent of New Labour in the eyes of the public could hardly be seen supporting a government it spent years criticising. Mr Rentoul also ignores the deep-seated antipathy many Labour grandees had for the Liberal Democrats (in part owing from the SDP split in the early 1980s) as seen with opposition to a Lib-Lab government from the likes of David Blunkett and John Reid.

In addition, I fail to see why a referendum would be necessary to change our political system and using parliamentary means to do so would be undemocratic. Considerably more momentous changes to British life such as universal primary education, the state pension and the National Health Service were implemented without a plebiscite.

Mr Rentoul also seems to assume that the Liberal Democrats would monopolise the third party vote. This not only ignores the growing power of the Green Party, but also the possibility of the growth of smaller parties due to lower barriers of entry into Westminster that PR provides. The Liberal Democrats (and their ancestor parties) would no longer have the near monopoly on protest vote they have enjoyed since at least 1945.

Though the Labour Party may need to rely on the Liberal Democrats for support in a UK with PR in order to govern, this wouldn’t be much different from the historical norm. The first Labour governments could only have gotten into power via support from Asquith and Lloyd George in 1923 and 1929-31. Wilson needed Grimond’s support to keep his government going in 1965-66 due to a crumbling majority, Callaghan had to resort to a pact with David Steel in 1977-78, and Blair needed Ashdown’s cooperation to win the landslide he did in 1997.

Labour has rarely won alone. It is high time it should come to terms with this fact if it wants to get into power again.

William Francis

London

John Rentoul wrongly asserts that the formation of the 2010 Tory/LibDem coalition shows that the LibDems would not join a progressive coalition in the future.

While he admits that the parliamentary arithmetic in 2010 made a Labour/LibDem coalition difficult, he ignores the inconvenient fact that a slew of Labour big beasts (including David Blunkett and Charles Clarke) took to the airways saying that they would withhold their support from any such coalition, so the potential Labour/LibDem coalition moved from difficult to impossible.

Philip Goldenberg

Woking

A well-planned stitch up

So Boris Johnson and his very expensive legal adviser can see the evidence that Sue Gray has lined up against him before he responds to the Metropolitan Police questionnaire?

Did Mr or Ms Joe Bloggs have the same chance when they came up against their alleged infringements of lockdown laws?

No wonder Boris Johnson is looking so confident. It seems like a well-planned stitch up. So much for the impartiality of the report.

Gordon Ronald

Hertfordshire

End of mandatory self-isolation

Soon we will not need to isolate if we test positive for Covid. When we don’t have serious symptoms or we attribute what we feel to a common cold or are asymptomatic, we can go to work and out to play. Especially if we will not be paid for precautionary isolation, then we will mix with the innocent.

There will be much more infection and the vulnerable will continue to fall ill, potentially developing long Covid. The government once again hopes that the debatable concept of herd immunity will solve our future health problems. It is a dangerous experiment conducted on a human population, not fruit flies in a laboratory. A political decision, not a scientific one.

Robert Murray

Nottingham

Grand gestures to distract from the PM’s limitations

The inability of the British prime minister to think strategically and plan ahead has been clear for some time: in his failure to “get Brexit done”; his poor decision making throughout the pandemic; his incapacity to protect the most vulnerable from a cost-of-living crisis; and his willingness to U-turn whenever he is backed into a corner.

His approach is always to make bold, sweeping statements, secure a high-vis photo opportunity, throw other people’s money at a problem and then move “onwards” to the next crisis.

Events in Ukraine have provided the “greased piglet” with another opportunity to make grand gestures in order to distract us from his limitations once again. Having accepted generous donations from Russia’s money-laundering oligarchs, he elbows his way onto centre stage in Munich in order to make high-sounding statements of that which is obvious to anyone who cares to spend a few moments thinking about the current situation.

International leaders, including Johnson, might have avoided current circumstances if they had taken Putin seriously in recent years and sought to understand and manage him rather than demonising and ignoring him. The crisis in Ukraine requires politicians to understand the complexity of the situation, the historical context of current events and, most important of all, the need to generate a plan that will enable those engaged in the crisis to achieve a dignified and diplomatic resolution.

As ever, Johnson has no plan beyond that which is expedient in the short term.

Graham Powell

Cirencester

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Don’t expect cafes to do your parenting for you

Anita Slater’s article doesn’t fully explain why the cafe manager was ejecting a family because he felt their child was a health and safety risk. Could it be that he or she was left to run wild or to crawl on the floor while staff were trying to serve hot drinks to other customers?

Maybe the cafe is just anti-babies and children, as some customers can be too, but I’d hazard a guess that they are more likely to be anti-parents who do not control their children.

Anita says her area is largely white and middle class. Might I also suggest the word entitled? My children and grandchildren have been taken to pubs and cafes from the moment they were born and have received unsolicited praise for their behaviour because we set clear parameters. They understood that if they were going to share an adult space they had to rise to the occasion. Isn’t that the essence of community? That we learn to care about and respect each other?

Yes, parenting has always been stressful and exhausting, but once you have children you can’t expect cafes and the people who work in them to do your parenting for you, while you enjoy a little “me time”.

Jane Mogford

Cirencester