Madam,

What motivated Mark Rees to join the Labour Party? He sounds from his letter (‘Corbyn’s election will be a disaster for Labour’, last week’s Cambrian News) to be someone keen to promote a less vicious government in Westminster, one that puts a higher priority on supporting essential public services than the present Tory administration.

All well and good, but he must also realise that by publicly opposing the recently elected leadership, he is suggesting we should also support rolling programmes of privatisations, further deregulation of the financial sector, erosion of people’s rights, growing inequality, and the fighting of foreign wars, all, unfortunately, features of the previous ‘New Labour’ government.

By their voting record, it is clear that the Tories would have done the same, but more so. Is it so surprising that some MPs, acting more in tune with the basic principles of the Labour Party, exercised their democratic right to vote against these measures?

Jeremy Corbyn was one of those MPs, and he also has a fantastic record as an incorruptible, hard-working and principled politician. Before and after his election as leader, tens of thousands of people have joined or re-joined Labour because there now seems to be a chance to develop forward-looking policies that do not accept the old extremist capitalist ways.

Far from being ‘far Left’ as Mark suggests, Corbynite policies are a model of moderation, if you care to look at them and not be influenced by hysterical hype. Polls suggest there are large majorities of the general public in favour of measures like the public ownership of the railways and energy sector, and not making the people pay for the disasters inflicted by the banks. The Canadian people have just voted in a government committed to an ‘anti-austerity’ approach, similar to Labour’s current message, which might well minimise the agonies of cuts to services which regularly fill the pages of this paper.

The problem is, real Labour policies like these are rarely given a fair hearing in the press (Cambrian News excepted, I hope!) and for Labour Party members to talk of ‘disasters’ and (supposed) ‘lack of credibility’ is very unhelpful, to say the least…(self-fulfilling prophesies, anyone?) Those of us who disagreed with New Labour nevertheless still wanted and worked for a Labour government, and never resorted to this sort of public hysteria about the leadership.

Maurice Kyle, Comins Coch