I MUST take issue with Julian Brown’s letter of May 20, in which he called those who voted Green or Lib-Dem in the recent general election ‘traitors’ because they are not of the same political persuasion as him.

That is strong language and although his letter relates to Stroud, I presume his rationale also applies to the country as a whole.

I make three points in relation to his letter: 1. We live in a country where free speech and democratic rights are firmly established and many have died supporting those concepts.

Those who support them but vote differently to your contributor are ‘democrats’ not ‘traitors’.

2. In the May election 9.4 million people voted Labour but if we add the votes together of the five leading non-labour parties, their combined vote was 20.2 million. Thus labour was out-voted by a factor of two to one but if the logic of your contributor is to be believed we have a country where two thirds of voters are ‘traitors’ – but they are not, they are ‘democrats’.

3. Labour lost because they fought a poor election campaign – they failed to accept at least some responsibility for the 2007 economic crisis, they ran a campaign of micro-policies, and had poor leadership and direction with no aspiration or vision being apparent.

All this has been said by the candidates in the present Labour leadership race.

Chris Rothwell

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