Readers respond to articles by Andy Beckett and Peter Mandelson on the party’s political identity
The claim by Andy Beckett that Labour’s centre-left have run out of ideas is certainly true but doesn’t get to the heart of the problem(The problem is bigger than Keir Starmer – Labour’s centrists have run out of ideas, 24 September). The truth is that the centre-left of the Labour party has lost its nerve. This loss of nerve can be dated to 9 October 2007, when the then Labour chancellor, Alistair Darling, caved into the shadow chancellor, George Osborne, over inheritance tax.
Since then, Labour’s centrists have put their energies into placating critics on the right, specifically Tory voters and the rightwing press, and have largely ignored the needs of their natural supporters on the left. This obsession with “electability” has knocked the heart out of Labour because it has allowed the right to define its electability. Labour’s centre-left agrees with its rightwing critics that it can only be deemed electable when it is not a threat to the Conservative party and its interest groups.
