YP Letters: Grassroots battle ahead to protect democracy in Britain

Selection of Labour candidates is likely to become more divisive under Jeremy Corbyn.

IT is with sadness I read of the possible re-selection battles some sitting Labour MPs might have to face. What happened to those open primaries we were promised?

People must join parties and keep up their party membership. Then they will be able to vote in contests and select the Parliamentary candidates they want. In trade unions in the 1960s and 1970s a number of wildcat strikes were called, my father used to tell me, because people he described as ‘Trots’ would just talk and talk for hours (filibuster) until only their people were left behind to vote.

When I was a branch chair, I always ended meetings by 9pm and I had a two hour limit on all meetings too. I don’t think democracy can work unless you take care of the details, like starting meetings when and where arranged. Labour’s more urgent problems are in the town halls and not in Parliament.

If Labour don’t get to grips with local authorities and get rid of the graft and “jobs for the boys” sub-culture there, they are never going to appear credible for national government.

From: Roger Backhouse, Upper Poppleton, York.

ISN’T it strange that the Government wants to cut the number of elected MPs while increasing the number of unelected peers? And this despite a cross-party committee finding no good reason for reducing the number of MPs. As Professor Anthony King points out, this also reduces the already limited pool of MPs who are suitable to be Ministers.

Reducing the number of MPs means redrawing constituency boundaries on a larger scale. Now I may be a twisted old cynic, but isn’t it highly likely that this will favour the Conservatives at the next General Election?

David Cameron’s political advisor Lynton Crosby is a veteran of Australian politics where he helped the Liberal Party and allies to victory. Boundary changes were notoriously used to keep minority parties in power in certain states. Could Crosby have suggested such a thing? He might have learned from that wily old bird Jim Callaghan who delayed implementing a Boundary Commission review that would cost Labour seats. It did no good. Labour lost the next election.

From: Mr A Sheehan, West Witton.

CAN anyone tell me which MPs are putting Yorkshire’s interests before party interests? I can’t think of one.