Madam,

Gosh, I certainly seem to have ruffled a few feathers on the ‘left wing’ with my letter to the Cambrian News!

If Maurice Kyle and Rose Fowler are regular readers of the Letters page they will see that for the last 10 years since moving to Aberystwyth I have consistently supported the principles of the Labour movement, equality, fairness and justice and opposed the actions of our Lib Dem MP and the Tory Coalition that he voted for.

Indeed, during my 35-year membership of the party I have been employed by a welfare advice charity, a major trades union, a number of social housing organisations and now work again for the trades union movement.

So for my motives to be questioned and then to be urged to tear up my membership card and join the Tory party I find somewhat baffling – echoes of the militant tendency that I fought to rid the party of in the 80s!

To achieve the power to deliver what you want to deliver you must learn how to compromise, something which I fear our new leader and more worryingly those he has chosen to work with him and many of his supporters are unwilling or unable to do.

It is only in government that you can deliver the sort of economic and social change that Maurice and Rose want to see but obviously think that I don’t.

They were keen to remind us that New Labour stood up to dictators and opposed global terrorism, but have forgotten that without New Labour in Government there would be no devolution, no minimum wage, no tax credits, no peace in Northern Ireland and probably no NHS left worth trying to save today.

Maurice and Rose tell us that there are national majorities for a number of left wing policies, but I’m afraid there are no equivalent majorities for trust in Corbyn on economic or security matters and no political leader has ever become prime minister without that trust.

It is suggested that I am an unhelpful and hysterical right winger who should not be in the Labour Party. I prefer to see myself as a realist who knows that left wing Labour has never won a general election but that moderate and realistic Labour has done and will do so again.

Yours etc,

Mark Rees,

Clos Sulien, Cae Ceredig,

Llanbadarn Fawr