Is Labour really an acceptable alternative to the Tories?

Letters to the editor: our readers share their views. Please send your letters to letters@independent.co.uk

Starmer is every bit as reactionary as the Tories (PA)

Some 180 Tory MPs have just voted to impose Rishi Sunak as the prime minister of 67 million people. They call this farce “democracy”.

Sunak is the richest MP in British history, and has admitted that he's never had any working-class friends. He is an obscenely rich man who will govern in the interests of the rich. He will look to make working-class people and the poor pay for the crises of the rich, just like we paid for the 2008 bankers’ crash.

Anyone who thinks that the Labour Party is the alternative was put right in a radio interview their leader Keir Starmer conducted during the Tory leadership coronation. Starmer was there to show he is every bit as reactionary as the Tories.

As Sunak was anointed Tory leader, Starmer hit the airwaves to denounce the Just Stop Oil protesters as “arrogant” and “wrong”, and to argue for longer prison sentences for those protesting against climate change. Starmer also admitted that “there’s not a great deal” between his Labour Party and the Tories when it comes to immigration policies.

The Tory attitude to migration and refugees has been to construct a “hostile environment” for those who want to start a new life in the UK. The Tories have spent a jaw-dropping £140m on a barbaric scheme which will see desperate refugees held in camps in Rwanda. Starmer has refused to promise that a future Labour government will end the scheme.

The Labour Party is no alternative to the Tories. Workers will have to rely on their own strength and trade union organisations to resist Sunak’s offensive against us. And we’ll need those unions to fight that loyal servant of the British establishment, Keir Starmer, should he come to office.

Sasha Simic

London

Soup’s on

Brilliantly accurate article by Thomas Kingsley about the blackouts of the 1970s (“Tedious and horrible”: What life was like during the 1970s blackouts). I was then at junior school (do we still call it that, I wonder?) and I remember my father got hold of two hurricane lamps which proved very useful indeed.

A friend of his managed to fit up a television to an old lorry battery, and we did pop over there once so my mother could watch something which had no appeal to us children. I also remember my mother made an awful lot of vegetable soup – some of dubious quality. But then again most children moan about vegetables, don’t they?

Yes, it was most certainly tedious, cold and horrible, and it looks likely we are to experience something similar in the coming months! Luckily for us, I have a good recipe for soup.

Robert Boston

Kent

And they all lived happily ever after

Instead of doing the job he is paid for by representing his constituents, Boris can now jet off to the sun again to write his memoirs.

Once published, they are sure to be found in the fiction section of your local library (assuming it has not already been shut down).

Geoff Forward

Stirling

Rishi’s meal deal

Tory MPs have made clear their disdain for party members by forestalling a leadership election: setting a threshold as high as 100 nominations and withholding sufficient of these that only one candidate was able to reach it.

Their excuse is that we can’t wait another five days for a new prime minister. Why, then, was it previously acceptable to take two months to select one?

Now we shall have a prime minister who has earned the gratitude of all who received furlough handouts, but possibly not those who were made to fund those handouts through taxation, higher interest rates and inflation.

Given the side-lining of members and the unprecedented wealth of the new leader, wouldn’t it be appropriate for the party to abolish its membership fee? One might go further and suggest a free buffet and drinks at meetings.

John Riseley

North Yorkshire

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It’s time for a working class prime minister

It’s so nice to see the Tory party championing democracy and progressive politics by appointing a stonkingly rich British Asian man, following two women MPs in the last six years.

Maybe if they wanted to be taken seriously as progressives, they could field an ordinary person from a working-class background as leader, while putting their position as employees of the British public out to tender in a general election?

Ian Henderson

Norwich

Hooray for democracy

Joe Biden received over 81 million votes to become president of the United States. Emmanuel Macron received 21 million votes to become president of France. Olaf Schultz received 12 million votes to become German chancellor. Narendra Modi received 229 million votes to become the Indian prime minister.

And what happens in the United Kingdom? The previous prime minister was voted for by just 81,000 people and the new prime minister was invited to take on the job by the 150 or so people who happened to be members of parliament.

But that’s democracy for you.

Paul Moore

Surrey