Sir Keir Starmer

• STEVEN Taylor (Sir Keir Starmer needs to stand down, May 20), reports how he backed a vote of no confidence in Labour Party leader, Sir Keir Starmer.

The branch meeting of the Hampstead and Kilburn Labour Party carried the motion.

Mr Taylor mentions how under Sir Keir’s leadership, there have been suspensions and expulsions of members, discussions blocked and resolutions ruled out of order.

He likens Sir Keir to a dictator, and believes he “shames the party and the movement”. In addition, he is “completely useless” and needs to stand down or be removed.

There is another charge against Sir Keir, that of misleading, even deceiving, Labour members in the leadership election in 2020.

During the leadership campaign, he paraded his “socialism” by offering 10 left-wing “pledges”, including backing workers’ rights by repealing the Trade Union Act; increasing taxes for high earners and corporations; that public services such as rail, mail, energy and water should not be making profits for private shareholders; no more illegal wars; and a review of UK arms sales.

In an interview with your newspaper Sir Keir spoke of there needing to be a fundamental shift in wealth and power (presumably not from the poor and disadvantaged to the wealthy and influential), (Keir Starmer leadership interview: ‘I’m a socialist… for me it has a very practical application’, January 24).

We have heard precious little of these pledges since.

Indeed winning the leadership contest appears to have mysteriously jolted his claimed political stance from that of a socialist, continuity-Corbynite, MP to one of a typical centre-right Labour leader, whose role is to present the party as no challenge to the established order and make it a safe stand-in when the electorate gets weary, for a while, of Tory rule.

ERIC KREIGER
Haverstock Road, NW5