Labour delusions and disquiet in the ranks

Your leader (Labour party: Battling the bosses, January 18) says the reaction of Len McCluskey and other public sector union leaders to changes in Labour's economic position confronts Ed Miliband with "a Clause IV moment that he did not seek". This is not the case. If the failure to brief the unions in advance of Ed Balls's speech to the Fabians was not incompetence then it was provocation. The Labour leader and the shadow chancellor have engineered a public conflict with the unions that they believe will play well in target seats in the south of England.

But the Labour leadership is asking not only that the unions be publicly humiliated but that they continue paying for the privilege. As the GMB's readiness to reconsider its funding of the party demonstrates, this is dangerous and unrealistic. It is also a continuation of New Labour's neglect of the party's base – a strategy that landed Labour with 29% of the vote at the last election.

Alan Johnson (The union delusion, 18 January) may have been right to challenge the unions' kneejerk rejection of Labour's policy change. But rather than urging Mr Miliband to conclusively bring a section of his own base to heel, perhaps the Guardian could encourage him to show his strength against the banks and the energy companies that are the actual causes of our current economic problems.
Peter Grosvenor
Associate professor, political science department, Pacific Lutheran University

 In response to Barry Norman's prediction of a mass departure from Labour ranks (Letters, 18 January), he should bear in mind that true socialist members remain within the party in an effort to keep it on the right course. Turncoats who give up if they don't get things going their own way are too weak to hold such a course and are a waste of space within the party. If a member of your family makes a mistake and takes the wrong path, you stand firm as a family and seek to bring them back to the true and safe path.
Robin Vyrnwy-Pierce
Redditch, Worcestershire

 I am an Usdaw shop steward. I believe in a civilised public sector, and for precisely that reason wage restraint is a must to sustain this sector and the jobs in it, without placing an onerous burden on us in the private sector. The public sector unions will be better advised to negotiate more support for the Union Learning Fund. Members across the board would benefit (including us in the private sector). The ULF is a wonderful ground-level way of enhancing of members' skills. And thus is also good for the UK economy.
John Barstow
Fittleworth, West Sussex

 The Labour party will never represent the interests of those it was founded to represent so long as there is no realistic challenge from the left. They rightly assume their former adherents will not vote Tory or Lib Dem. The three-party consensus has become such a serious impediment to democracy that bold steps are required from our boldest politicians.

Altruistic MPs like Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell with huge majorities need to make a pact with local Greens to fight the next election, and other decent Labour candidates need to be found to stand aside but help Greens in constituencies where they have a chance. Every member of the Green party, beyond Caroline Lucas, needs to commit to getting stuck into their constituencies with their political message. (Everyone knows their take on green issues.) Twenty of these deals could shift Labour's attention. I suppose it would be asking too much for the far left to end their juvenile, Pythonesque schisms and lend a hand.
Peter Robbins

 It is apparent that patience with the Labour party has finally run out. For well over a decade, it has betrayed its core voters, tarnished the reputation of this country, and mismanaged the economy. It is timely therefore that major trade unions have openly criticised Labour's leadership and the fact that it agrees with Tory and Lib Dem economic policy. But the problem with Labour doesn't end with Ed Miliband and Ed Balls. The unsustainable economic policies endorsed by Labour, Lib Dems and Tories mean the same-old-same-old will continue for decades. More austerity measures, more politicians scamming ordinary taxpayers of their money, and more incompetent people supposedly governing our country.

If trade unions disaffiliate from Labour, the Green party welcomes them to join a party that stands up for hardworking people, that has sustainable and sensible economic policies, without being anti-business, and has the conviction to stand up for what it believes in without making promises, then betraying them. We welcome trade unionists to our party and look forward to working with them to better our country's future.
Cllr Adam Pogonowski
Green group leader, Cambridge city council

 As the Labour frontbench and the Guardian join the great European hair-shirt conspiracy, I'm struck again by the effective eradication of the word "tax" from the "tax and spend" equation and the political vocabulary of our rulers, irrespective of party brand. As long as the citizen is conceived primarily as a consumer, and the unstated bottom line of British politics is never to be seen to threaten the consumer's disposable income, we will never hear a politician say the unsayable: "Your tax buys things you rather like having. Here's why you're going to need to pay a bit more for them."
Barry Taylor
Stone, Staffordshire

 Of all the bizarre statements in your anti-union editorial, the most bizarre was the idea that Miliband "didn't seek this fight". He said he was going to freeze the wages of union members. That it didn't occur to him (or you) that leaders elected by those members might actually decide to do what they are paid for, and stand up for them, says everything about the attitudes of Miliband and your leader writer that genuine democrats need to know.
Sam Buckley
Bexhill on Sea, East Sussex

 As a retired Unite Union Official, (often dubbed a "moderate") and a long-standing Labour party member, I found myself agreeing with every word of Len McCluskey's article (17 January) and little of Alan Johnson's reply (18 January). Nowhere in Len's article did he argue against the need to reduce the deficit, but there is a choice to be made about who pays for it and over what timescale. At the moment, ordinary working and non-working people seem to be bearing the brunt, with the disabled, women and young people being particularly badly hit.

The Labour movement needs to have a grown-up debate, not about whether to clear the deficit but how. Why, for example, is no one advocating a temporary increase in income tax by a few points until the deficit is cleared? Everyone who earns enough to pay income tax would then contribute something according to their means and would make the phrase "we're all in this together" more than a cruel soundbite. Surely this would be fairer than throwing thousands of people out of work and leaving a job vacuum for a generation of young people. In the current financial climate, I don't think this would necessarily be the electoral poisoned chalice that it would have been 10 years ago.
Alan Tiplady

 Surely it's time for Messrs Miliband and Balls to face some obvious facts. For example, Nobel prize-winning US economist Paul Krugman calculates that, as a percentage of GDP, UK public debt is at one of its lowest ever levels, perhaps less than a third that of the 1930s. Present government debt only started to grow after the crisis began and, in historical context, it's no more than "an uptick" (Krugman's words). Furthermore, Morgan Stanley has shown that Britain's public debt is dwarfed by its private debt, which they estimate at a truly stunning 950% of GDP.

Steve Keen, one of the very few economists to foresee the world financial crisis, concludes from this: "The UK is the most indebted country in the world." Britain's boom, if ever there was one, was largely based on private borrowing and, as Keen suggests, a day of reckoning is approaching. The genuine, perhaps unavoidable, danger is that of a rapid collapse of the private debt pyramid, with a devastating impact on the real economy.

Labour should be explaining this predicament and developing policies for handling the coming depression. But alas, there's no sign of this – instead we see a revival of Blairite triangulation. The only people talking sense (real-world economists apart) appear to be trade union officials. So congratulations, Len McCluskey and company! In opposing policies that accentuate the ongoing contraction, damage public services and lengthen the dole queue, you and your colleagues are fighting for us all. Sorry, Mr Johnson, you are the one with delusions!
Peter Reed
Former executive member, Labour Finance and Industry Group

 The Eds, Alan Johnson et al are missing a vital point. Continuing to back the cuts in the public sector and to the services they provide is hitting hardest those who can't afford to be hit any more.

This is not about ideology; it is about protecting the right to a fair and decent society. Many public sector workers are badly paid. If they live and work in the north it is likely they are the only wage earner in the family – especially if they are women.

As a trade unionist I respect everything the left has done and continues to do in helping to keep the values of socialism and fairness in this society alive.

More than 30 years of neoliberalism without the dissenting voices from the left would have seen public services, state education and the welfare state absolutely finished when Thatcher was in power. We have a big job ahead of us to stop this government in its tracks – what a pity Labour won't join us in this admirable and necessary fight.
Alexis Chase
Bexleyheath, Kent

The letter above from Peter Reed was amended on 22 January 2012. In the original, an editing error led to him being described as an executive member of the Labour Finance and Industry Group. This has been corrected.