October 3: Jeremy Corbyn will have a hard job convincing the electorate

JEREMY Corbyn may well share the late Margaret Thatcher’s clarity of vision but that, however, is where any similarity between the two of them ends (Danny Rogers, The Yorkshire Post, September 28).

Margaret Thatcher was elected at a time when Corbyn’s beloved Labour party, in thrall to its union paymasters, had effectively quit any pretence of governing – other than in name.

Ordinary working people who simply wanted their children educating and their bins emptying were rightly fed up and so chose the only electable alternative.

Corbyn, by contrast, became Labour leader at a time of stable Tory government under David Cameron when the electorate had just demonstrated its confidence in his premiership by re-electing him. If Mr Corbyn wants to become the next Prime Minister, he will have a hard job convincing the electorate that he has a better alternative to offer.

From: John Fisher, Menwith Hill, Harrogate.

AS long as our first-past-the-post system allows governments to govern with a minority of the electoral vote, democracy will continue to wither on the vine.

General Franco may well have had more legitimacy to govern than some of the minority governments produced by our system. Britain appears condemned to continue to suffer politically extreme minority governments whose short-term short sighted policies appear to put political party first and the country and its people last.

For the foreseeable future, we may continue to have the choice of ineffective Labour or Conservative governments. Could the election of Corbyn herald the advent of more politically extreme party leaders and could this finally discredit first-past-the- post elections?

From: Coun Tim Mickleburgh (Lab), Boulevard Avenue, Grimsby.

THE right wing have predictably claimed that Labour’s proposed new economic policies are 
based on greed, and will be 
an attack on the middle classes (The Yorkshire Post, September 29).

But if we have to have austerity, surely it is right that the burden falls heaviest on those most able to pay?

In other words looking at the tax paid by high earners and inheritance tax rather than hammering the low paid 
through the removal of tax xredits and hitting those trying to find work.