Letters: Labour’s stance on Europe is a bad dream

Stella Creasy says she will not behave like Mark Francois. He was ultimately successful because he reflected the views on Europe of many Conservative Party members. 

Stella could do the same for the Labour Party. But she seems to lack the courage and conviction to do so.
Brendan Donnelly

As a member of the Labour Movement for Europe, I read Stella Creasy’s article with interest. Would a more honest name for the LME now be Labour Movement for Europe But Not In My Lifetime?
John Gaskell 
Chair, Grassroots for Europe

Stella Creasy sees herself as distinct from the Lexiters within the Labour Party. Yet she still subscribes to the myth that Brexit was some kind of legitimate political decision. It wasn’t – it was the political equivalent of a street mugging, based on lies, foreign interference and illegal spending.

If you’re mugged in the street the police don’t say – “We’ve got your wallet back but we’ve given the mugger £20 from it.”  

The agents behind Brexit have ensured that the platinum deal which the UK had before it left the EU is gone for ever, but, otherwise, why should we accept anything other than the full restitution of that which was stolen from us?

Unless and until Labour openly acknowledges that Brexit was the biggest heist ever carried out in this country, it is going to struggle with both the consequences of and contradictions inherent in Brexit, and struggle with gaining the support of those in favour of Rejoin, even as those who voted Leave dwindle in number.
Nick Wray 
Eyemouth, Scottish Borders

There is only one way to get a message through to Labour’s “leaders” – make it clear we are not going to vote for them until they have an honest policy on Europe. Going for growth outside the single market is spin doomed to disappoint. Since “perceived” party self-interest drives their policy we must call them out and place our votes elsewhere.
Stephen Edwards

This sounds like a pragmatic position to me. Stella Creasy rightly notes that it’s somewhat arrogant to assume that the EU would straightforwardly welcome us back in. She’s right to concentrate on what can be achieved in the short term. I speak as someone who would love to rejoin, but I think the current political mix in the UK justifies a degree of caution from the government.
Richard Woodcock

After reading Stella Creasy’s interview I am about to join the Labour Movement for Europe.
Eile Gibson

The Musk slips
Re: “Elon’s little helpers” (TNE #419). If Jess Phillips is a witch, then, quite clearly, we need more witches.
Peter Tyzack 
Severn Beach, Gloucestershire

I could have huge respect for Elon Musk if he used his wealth, connections, technology and intelligence to liberate Afghan women, resolve the conflict in Sudan, tackle climate change, and solve so many other genuinely desperate situations around the world. But that doesn’t seem to serve his “purpose”, sadly.

Musk strikes me as someone that is bored, believes he is invincible, and he’s poking a stick everywhere just to see what happens and what he can get away with.
Michael Dyson

My mum Berlina visited me over Christmas from her home in France. The subject of Elon Musk came up several times at the dinner table. My mother isn’t a fan (neither am I).

Born and raised in southern Africa, she suggested that the world’s richest man make amends for his privileged upbringing in apartheid South Africa by helping his less fortunate compatriots who – unlike him – still live in the world’s most unequal country.

I mentioned to her Musk’s plan for a colonial Martian city. He wants to put a million people on the Red Planet over many decades. 

Mum responded that Musk was the type of person who “would escape to Mars and incinerate the Earth”. While that might seem far-fetched in 2025, it may not do so at some future date. You have been warned!
Will Goble 
Rayleigh, Essex

The world treats Musk as a genius inventor yet he has designed nothing and isn’t an engineer. Bankrupt Tesla was rescued by the US department of energy. Billions in subsidies later and it hasn’t designed a new car for five years. Global sales fell in 2024, unlike the world’s largest electric vehicle maker – BYD – which is up 15%.

Oh, did Musk mention that 50% of new Teslas rolling off production lines is made in China (with 95% Chinese components, including battery). Making America Great Again!
Tom Shaw

I have just watched Nigel Farage use a TV interview to declare his belief in free speech. We might not like what was said, says Farage, but people like Elon Musk have a right to say it.

Can this be the same Nigel Farage who only the previous week threatened Kemi Badenoch with legal action because she used her right to free speech to question the way Reform presents its claimed membership numbers? Surely not?
Bob Hale 
Portishead, Bristol

Illogical claim
Paul Mason’s weekly uncritical plaudits of the new government are increasingly irritating. In “We must make a better job of the way we work” (TNE #419) he supports moves to “end the bias towards low-paid, precarious work” – an aim I wholeheartedly support. But he then applauds the recent increase in employers’ NI contribution because, he asserts, it enhances the “move [of] workers, capital and resources from low-value sectors of the economy to high-value ones”.

That claim is illogical, and at odds with readily available evidence. Rather than reducing the size of the precariat, the increase has reinforced it. Businesses are hiring fewer people and on less secure contracts. This inevitable consequence has been widely reported in the media.

The increase has discouraged, not encouraged, employers to retain, or expand, recruitment on longer-term, more secure, contracts. I know of many such adverse decisions by firms and I’m sure that many readers will also do so.
Sean MacEoin 
London

This was an excellent article from Paul Mason. Umbrella companies came out of the IR35 legislation, as an alternative to using a personal service company. Those rules state that where a worker would have been an employee were it not for the fact that he was operating as a company, IR35 applies. 

I don’t have a problem with that – companies should not be used to avoid employment responsibilities. My objection is that IR35 then makes the worker tax himself as an employee, including paying the employer taxes. 

Why not make the employer do that, nullifying the benefit to the employer, many of whom still insist that contractors use companies to avoid their employer responsibilities? A shameful piece of legislation.
Mark Rowlands

Reading for life
The line in Charlie Connelly’s article “Trump’s burning ambition” (TNE #419), about how childhood reading helps form you as a person, resonated with me. I read many books in my school library; one of them was by Clinton T Duffy, a former warden at San Quentin State Prison in San Francisco. It was called 88 Men And 2 Women (1962) and was about the executions over which he had presided.

It touched me profoundly and within a decade I was in correspondence with a death row inmate in San Quentin. Nearly 30 years later, he and I still write to each other; I have learned a lot from him. He is now sentenced to life without parole, and is no longer under threat of the death penalty.
Katy Amberley 
London N1

Dai by your side 
Re: The excellent Peter Trudgill on pet names (Letters, TNE #419; column, TNE #418). Peter struggles to find a shorter version of the name David.  I’m surprised he didn’t consider the abbreviation widely used in Wales where the third and fifth letters of the name are removed to leave the diminutive “Dai”.  

Living in Wales, I know more people commonly known as Dai than those with the longer version that features on their birth certificate.
Dewi Jones 
Pontypool, Wales

Peter Trudgill (TNE #418) rightly makes the point about the difficulty of shortening names by chopping off pieces at random. But in Liverpool, where I spent most of my working life, my colleague Ian was regularly greeted with “All right I?” (to rhyme with bee).
Chris Kerr 
Pewsey, Wiltshire

No fair share
In “Breakthrough Point” (TNE #416), Matthew d’Ancona says that the Liberal Democrats with 12.2% of the national vote “won 72 seats thanks to the quirks of first-past-the-post”. I would argue that these quirks failed as usual to give the Lib Dems their fair share of the seats, which would be 0.122 x 650 = 79.
James Dunlop 
Combe Down, Somerset

Don’t join the witch hunt
I have read TNE since its beginnings. I was disturbed, however, to read Philip Ball’s comment about Jay Bhattacharya in TNE #415.

I am not a conspiracy theorist and believe absolutely in the danger and awfulness of Covid 19 and the pandemic. I’m also extremely alarmed at the re-election of Donald Trump, the loony statements of Elon Musk and the direction the world is going. 

However, I don’t think the Great Barrington Declaration should be dismissed so thoughtlessly. The signatories were all experts in their field – university professors (Stanford, Oxford and Harvard) with years of research and public health understanding – and I was shocked at how their views were trashed and their years of research “cancelled”, their careers compromised.

During Covid, it was hardly as if our government and other leaders demonstrated that they knew what they were doing! They opted to take the advice of one set of experts and so deemed it necessary to wipe out the views of any others.

This was a nasty spectacle and characteristic of the black/white, “no, you shut up” cancel culture. I would be really concerned if the New European unthinkingly joined this sort of witch hunt.
Cath Bruzzone 
Eel Pie Island, London

BELOW THE LINE
Comments, conversation and correspondence from our online subscribers

Everyday Philosophy (TNE #419) asks, “do humans need to hibernate?” I wouldn’t mind hibernating throughout the coming Trump presidency…
Paul James

Re: Patience Wheatcroft’s “Welcome to the Lords; mind the buckets” (TNE #419. We should turn the Houses of Parliament into a museum and build a new one a bit like the Reichstag (round, with a glass roof where members of the public can walk round looking down on the public servants). Making it circular will – hopefully – stop the childish point-scoring across the present house, calling for more civilised debate. Also, base it in a tired northern town like Rotherham (or York, if Rotherham is a step too far), thus levelling up.
Amanda Welch

Move the country’s political centre to somewhere more sensible like Birmingham and build a purpose-built and fit-for-purpose new parliament. It will almost certainly cost the taxpayer less than when you factor in running costs, while also actually levelling up somewhere.
Kit Macinnes-Manby

Re: “How Edinburgh’s music beats the January gloom” (Carousel, TNE #419). Oh, my city! I’ve lived here most of my life, Edinburgh is so familiar to me and yet I can still be moved by the beauty and peace as I walk the streets and gardens. Any type of weather (well maybe not the windy, rain-in-your-face days) are magical. The Botanic Gardens in the mist? Amazing.
Anne Dalrymple

“How to wake up woke” by Matthew d’Ancona (TNE #419) was as erudite as ever. Brilliant!
Brian Elliott

Re: Your website coverage of the 10th anniversary of the Charlie Hebdo attack. 

I arrived in Grenoble on the Sunday after the massacre. The streets were thronging with families silently walking with solemn expressions. The following day I went to teach classes at the local university and found every student sitting quietly at their desks with “I am Charlie” placards before them. 

I have never, before or since, seen such a moving display of human compassion.
Andy Wright

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