Sir Keir Starmer

• JENNY Woolf berates me for saying that Sir Keir Starmer is not decent, trustworthy or hopeful, (I shall vote to send a Labour MP to Westminster, August 25).

I really wish he was decent, trust­worthy and hope­ful. But he isn’t.

He made promises when he stood for the leadership that he subsequently broke.

He’s made the party sectarian, undemocratic, and factional.

He’s promoting policies that are less than a cigarette paper’s width away from Conservative, while waging a thoroughly sectarian war against socialists.

Financial austerity is the only slogan he seems happy to endorse.

He certainly doesn’t support the workers and communities who are trying to defend themselves against the Conservatives.

Once you combine this failure to stand alongside Labour with his expulsions, the shutdown of democracy, the rigging of selection lists and the imposition of candidates, you despair.

Sir Keir has as much affinity with the cause of labour as a stump. He’s thoroughly untrustworthy and entirely hopeless. It’s a lethal combination.

I wish it wasn’t so, Jenny Woolf, but I didn’t make him tell lies to become leader, renege
on promises once he became leader, tear up agreed policies, and override conference decisions.

That was all down to Sir Keir.

STEVEN TAYLOR
Hampstead & Kilburn Constituency Labour Party, NW6