Sir Keir Starmer

• I WELCOME your editorial (Don’t let a single by-election result knock us off course, July 27) but there is simply no evidence to suggest that Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour will put climate change before an imaginary electoral advantage.

It’s imaginary because the ULEZ policy was not the determining factor in Uxbridge, it was Labour’s refusal to explain and support it.

The argument was pretty straightforward. ULEZ, ultra low emission zone, would reduce pollution, and save lives as a consequence; 1,000 lives a year according to research by Imperial College.

Sir Keir’s agenda is not only timid but deeply conservative. He’s happy to rig shortlists and selections, impose candidates, suspend and expel socialists, but he’s never going to defend a policy which offends the polluting lobby attached to Rupert Murdoch, the Daily Mail, Express or Telegraph.

To say he is a toxic disappointment is an understatement of ironic proportions. Even those of us who expected nothing from Sir Keir have been sold short.

There was no reason FOR voting Labour in Uxbridge. Perhaps that’s why so few people bothered.

STEVEN TAYLOR
Hampstead & Kilburn CLP