• LABOUR’s drive to remove all Green Party councillors from the Highgate ward was perhaps not quite the principled effort Maddy Raman depicts (A positive campaign, May 10).

Given that the Greens’ Sian Berry came top of the poll, it might have been counter-productive. For us, their high-pressure effort culminated at lunchtime on polling day, when the doorbell rang. We opened the door to see three Labour campaigners asking whether we would be voting for the party.

One of us said: “I have already voted!” “But there is someone else living here.” “Yes, and they voted at breakfast time too.” This, along with duplicated leaflets among the flood of Labour literature coming through the door, certainly suggests inefficiency.

But Labour’s attack on the Greens confirms the habitual Labour tactic of going after other liberal-left parties in its fight to defeat the Conservatives. When will Labour learn that it has no monopoly of virtue, that democracy means respecting those with different views, and that the way out of the present national political impasse is through making progressive alliances?

NICOLETTE MOONEN
ROBIN KINROSS
York Rise, NW5