2 hours ago
4
Yes, Polly Toynbee, the Labour government has managed some worthwhile achievements, but its route to those achievements has been convoluted to the point of obtuseness (Let me tell you the good things the government has done in 2025 – because it certainly won’t, 22 December). Keir Starmer’s biographer Tom Baldwin has noted that Starmer is an iterative problem solver who gets the right solution, eventually.
There are three problems with this approach; most importantly, when his starting point is too distant from the right solution he wastes time that could be better put to increase the number of successful achievements; second, he ends up looking weak to parliamentary opposition and the electorate because he’s reversed his position so often; and lastly, he causes anger, frustration and resentment within his own party.
In short, Starmer should listen seriously to his opponents in his own party. When his initial instinct is to instead suppress opposition, it is no wonder that it takes him so long to work out when he is in the wrong.
Hylton Guthrie
North Shields, Tyne and Wear
Polly Toynbee rightly draws attention to Labour’s successes, but, as she says, “what’s the use” when the government and its leader are so unpopular. She is correct that voters have little patience with incumbents’ failure to produce change, compounded in this case by policy errors and an inability to tell a convincing story. The danger is that without some restoration of Labour’s fortunes, defeat by the far right beckons at the next general election, when many of Labour’s achievements will be dismantled.
In these circumstances, the prospects under an alternative leader will continue to be a matter for speculation. One of the hardest choices for a leader will always be to consider whether their own position helps or hinders the prospects for their party and the country. Keir Starmer may well come to reflect that stepping aside at the appropriate time would enable transition to a new leadership better equipped both to unite the party and collaborate with others to ensure there is no return to the destructive rightwing policies of the past.
Dr Anthony Isaacs
London
Polly Toynbee points to the achievements of the government since July 2024, but we have been here before. It was not popular on the left to say so, but New Labour did some positive things – from the minimum wage to investment, albeit qualified by privatisation. All that, however, was overshadowed by the Iraq war, just as currently Gaza rightly looms large. Labour needs to get rid of its imperial delusions, or, as the Sex Pistols sang almost 50 years ago now, there is no future in England’s dreaming.
Keith Flett
Tottenham, London
Finally, someone with the courage to list the positive achievements of this government. I am heartily sick of the expectation that so many years of Tory mismanagement can be turned around in five minutes. Get behind this team and give them a chance. The alternative doesn’t bear thinking about.
Julia Morrison
Newcastle upon Tyne
