I DON’T know where Gordon Bennetti gets the bizarre idea that Labour activists want him to be disallowed from voting Conservative (“A proud Tory”, SNJ letters, July 19).

This is just bluster.

All the Labour activists I know would defend to the death Gordon’s right to vote for whomever he wishes.

Even more bizarre is his claim that Tory voters hid their allegiance in Stroud because of fear of intimidation.

How ironic that Gordon seems to have been taken over by the very “politics of fear” that his own party is so adept at fomenting amongst the electorate.

Perhaps that’s the price you pay when you sup with such malign forces.

Gordon fancifully states that Labour wanted to “grab as many seats as possible…” – well, what on earth was Theresa May’s cynical and opportunistic calling of an unnecessary election, Gordon, than a grab for seats and a desire for a one-party (Tory) state?

One of the iron laws of politics is that the Tories always put their narrow party interest before those of the nation (I first voted in 1974 – and it has always been thus).

I’m sure David Drew will be grateful to Gordon for his career advice.

But best to bear in mind that David is now a shadow minister, might well be a government minister before long – and he might just get to like it (after all, Dennis Skinner MP is 85 years young, and is still, thankfully, going strong in the Commons).

Gordon then goes on to make the classic tribalist category-error that’s so often made by the right – namely, conflating New Labour with Labour-under-Corbyn.

As she emphasised herself, New Labour was the crowning glory of Margaret Thatcher – and all the New Labour policies Gordon lists were in fact neoliberal Tory-lite policies – policies which the Tories would have pursued with even more zealotry, had they been in power at the time.

Jeremy Corbyn’s great historic achievement has been to drag the centre-ground of politics back to where it belongs – and so to tar Corbyn’s Labour Party with the brush of neoliberal New Labour policies is just factually wrong, and is hopelessly to misunderstand British political history.

Labour under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn is gaining such popularity precisely because it is demonstrably not New Labour.

Dr Richard House

Stroud