Letters: Were we deceived by Labour?

Forced Labour

Sir: Matthew Parris wonders ‘Why was everyone fooled by Rachel Reeves?’(18 January) and goes on to include Sir Keir Starmer in this question. The former he concludes is ‘an empty vessel’ and the latter ‘bereft of ideas’. By ‘everyone’ he chiefly means the commentariat, although he claims he was not himself misled.

They and many others were fed up with the failure of successive Conservative governments, and wanted so badly to believe in Labour’s ability to form an effective administration that they never seriously applied due diligence by questioning its credibility or competences. At no stage were any stones lifted to determine what ‘nasties’ lay underneath. As a result, we are now beginning to see how many worms there really are and how short-changed much of the electorate feels.

The jury is still out, however, on an even more critical issue. Are the events, for which Parris is now effectively apologising on behalf of his colleagues, the result of their failure to do their job properly, or the consequence of a calculated deception deliberately practised by the Labour party as a form of ‘entryism’ to ensure the election of a government far more radical and left-wing than the British people would ever have voted for? I fear the worst on this, but hope for the best. Only time will tell.

Richard Longfield

Weston Patrick, Hampshire

Nasty party

Sir: Matthew Parris makes a good case against the commentariat for failing to recognise the policy vacuum at the heart of the Starmer/Reeves bid for government. Voters were more perceptive, which is surely why only a third of them supported Labour. There was one clear sign of the nastiness to come: the commitment to attack private education. But the Tories made little of it. If only Rachel Reeves’s interview on Political Thinking had been before the election. Then her boasting to Nick Robinson that she was the new Margaret Thatcher might have prompted Conservative stay-at-homes to skip to the polling booths to vote Tory, laughing all the way.