LETTER: Which way does Labour lean now?

So it’s “time for Labour to ditch Corbyn’s policies and return to the centre”, reports the Express & Star.

That’s been painfully obvious for a long time but I doubt if Labour will accept it.

History can be dull but it tells you where you are, how you got there and perhaps where you should go from here.

It’s been said several times since the election that Labour has now lost the last four elections, that’s part of the picture.

When Harold Wilson won the two elections of 1974 no-one thought that that was the last time Labour would win an election dressed in traditional Labour clothes, returning to “Labour’s core values” as the modern saying goes, but that’s how it looks because 45 years later Labour has failed to win an election with traditional left wing policies, “the party’s over” perhaps.

There have been 11 general elections since then of which Labour has lost eight and won only three, but it gets worse. The three it won were under Tony Blair and he had designated the party as ‘New Labour’, no official name change but the policies and the party were very different, very similar to the Conservatives.

But Labour now despises Blair and not just because of Iraq, ‘New Labour is dead’ said Ed Miliband, he was referring to the economic policies, not Iraq.

So he took the party well to the left, got the name ‘Red Ed’ and imploded at the 2015 election. In a classic act of misdiagnosis, Corbyn took the party even further to the left, and recorded one of the worst results in history.

Of the last eight Labour leaders, only Blair has won elections, John Smith died, the other six all lost, some of them twice over.

Ed Miliband I understand, is going to lead an enquiry into what went wrong for Labour at the recent election, I’d have thought it was screamingly obvious. Hard left wing policies have crashed in much of the world, not just here.

So will Labour change, become more middle of the road?

Don’t call it ‘New Labour’, they will hate you for that.

Well if they do it will take a long time, it’s difficult to see it winning the next election with the majority the Tories have now, it will take at least two elections for a resurgent Labour to overturn that.

Or will the party spend its time like Miss Havisham who lurched aimlessly about in her wedding dress for years after she had been jilted at the altar?

Tony Walker,

Stourbridge