Letters | 16 May 2019

Labour’s fence-sitting

Sir: James Forsyth writes that Mrs May and Mr Corbyn are ‘not, in fact, that far apart’ (‘May’s compromising position’, 11 May). To many, the Labour left is simply playing its very old game of sitting on the fence over the EU. The electorate have spotted it, and Labour paid for it in the local elections.

Some of us are old enough to remember Harold Macmillan’s withering mockery of the Labour attitude to the then Common Market in the early 1960s. It recalls the words of the old song: ‘She didn’t say yes and she didn’t say no; she didn’t say stay and she didn’t say go!’

The reason for Labour’s contorted behaviour was the same then as now. The European Movement is basically Christian Democratic, and Labour’s left wing, particularly now under Corbyn, cannot in the end be doing with any of that. Unfortunately, large parts of his party do not agree. Hence his equivocation, of which the talks with the Tories are probably, for him, just a part. Little, at the moment, is likely to come of them.
Chris Harries

Stoke Bishop, Bristol

We deserve Corbyn

Sir: I’m sick and tired of Conservatives using the threat of Corbyn as the principle motivation to endorse this useless administration.

The backstop is a constitutional outrage and it is a matter of national disgrace that any major party, let alone the Tory party, should be proposing we sign up to such a controversial treaty. May’s deal leaves us legally able to conduct independent trade deals, but without the ability to flex our rules on imported goods, thus rendering future free trade agreements simply a theoretical possibility. Meanwhile the EU will be able to offer highly prized access to the British consumer to other countries.

I am a Conservative party member who has campaigned on doorsteps in the last three general elections.