Dear Editor
The unrelenting campaign against Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party generated by the press and television
is a calculated effort to divide and confuse people: division has always been the way to control people.
Since 2010 it has been a main focus and resulted in the coalition between the Conservatives and Liberals, those 5 years did tremendous damage to the living standards of most families.
Since 2015 the Conservatives have continued to make more severe cuts in most public services and
drastically restricted wages and say they will continue to do so.
Despite divisive tactics people at the last general election did elect a huge number of Labour MP’s, about 240,
so the possibility of electing more this time and defeating the Conservatives is very real but only if the divide
and rule tactic is resisted and avoid another coalition.
People have had over 7 years of paying for the financial crisis not of their making, it is time to stop being
taken in and support the only organisation, the Labour Party, who are in a position to defeat the Conservatives.
A. Delahaoy, Silverknowes Gardens
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I’ll be voting SNP. Scottish votes don’t affect whether Labour get in or not.
– on ONE occasion (1964) Scottish MPs have turned what would have been a Conservative government into a Labour one. The Tory majority without Scottish votes would have been just one MP (280 vs 279), and as such useless in practice. The Labour government, with an almost equally feeble majority of 4, lasted just 18 months and a Tory one would probably have collapsed even faster.
– on ONE occasion (the second of the two 1974 elections) Scottish MPs gave Labour a wafer-thin majority (319 vs 316) they wouldn’t have had from the rest of the UK alone, although they’d still have been the largest party and able to command a majority in a pact with the Liberals, as they eventually did in reality.
– and on ONE occasion (2010) the presence of Scottish MPs has deprived the Conservatives of an outright majority, although the Conservatives ended up in control of the government anyway in coalition with the Lib Dems when Labour refused to co-operate with other parties in a “rainbow alliance”.
– which means that for 65 of the last 67 years, Scottish MPs as an entity have had no practical influence over the composition of the UK government.