Letter of the week: Stop waiting for Keir Starmer to inspire us

With Labour going from “landslide victory to permacrisis” as James Ball puts it, the role of First Past the Post needs to be considered. Keir Starmer’s landslide was not of votes, but only of seats. Starmer started off with most people sceptical or hostile.

We look forward to another shambles when Nigel Farage gets the seats but not the votes.
Keith Tunstall
Chichester

For the first time in 25 years, not one but two Conservative canvassers separately knocked on my door in Penarth, South Wales seeking my vote. No canvasser of any stripe had arrived previously. Do the Tories think they can win here over Labour?

Great paper – keep up the good reporting!
Allan Jones

Re: Alastair Campbell’s Diary, TNW #471

Alastair Campbell says Peter Mandelson refers to his second departure from Tony Blair’s cabinet as a “defenestration”. I was in Prague last week, where the tour guide told us all about an actual “defenestration”. In 1618, three officials were thrown from a window, but the rubbish below (mainly horse poop) had been piled so high that they survived. I presume Mandelson didn’t mean it in a literal sense. It’s quite an image though. 
Phil Lock

Alastair Campbell on Mandelson was written with genuine honesty and compassion, bringing some positivity from the darkest of subjects.
Christopher Chapman

After Jeffrey Epstein and Mandelson, we need to tighten up the vetting processes and tighten the laws around activities of MPs and ministers. Make it a requirement at election time that they have to reveal their interests and any donations they have been given. Make them apply for a Disclosure and Barring (DBS) certificate so the electorate can decide whether they will make suitable MPs.
Chris Platts

Suggested Reading

A world dragged headfirst into the Epstein Sewer

John Sweeney

Re: “The victim turned abuser in a very vicious circle” by John Sweeney (TNW #471)

Whatever the circumstances of her early life, it’s impossible to deny the fact that Ghislaine Maxwell has abused and betrayed her own sex.
Gilly Hodkinson

I got to know one of Robert Maxwell’s other daughters  quite well while working with her at Southern Television in the late 1960s. I have no doubt at all that Maxwell focused all his attention on his two sons and left his daughters to fend for themselves until Ghislaine, his youngest child, was the only one left at Headington Hill Hall and he could concentrate all his evil attention on her. There is no doubt in my mind that Robert Maxwell was an unscrupulous exploiter of women, including those in his own family.

Ghislaine Maxwell has a strong case for sympathy, not just condemnation.
Tim Fell

Re: “Epstein, Robert Maxwell and the Kremlin” by Françoise Thom (TNW #471)

Your contributors omit to comment on the fact that Robert Maxwell, appointed major in the British army by Churchill,  was sent to Berlin when the British  entered the city to retrieve German scientific papers. The Germans had made huge advances in physics and no doubt the design of nuclear weapons. On leaving the army, Maxwell took over Pergamon Press in 1951, publishing many of the early academic papers based on these documents. It is possible that it was then, if not before, that he established strong links with Israel.
Rosalyn St Pierre
Tunbridge Wells

Re: “The vinyl revival’s jazz problem” by Stuart Nicholson (TNW #471)

I’m not sure I agree that vinyl is behind the lack of innovation and an eye firmly fixed on the past in jazz. I feel the opposite might be true, and the prevalence of MP3s and streaming have stifled innovation for all types of music since the late 1990s. If anything, the vinyl revival has probably helped to develop new jazz styles; perhaps the London jazz boom of a few years back is an example.

Vinyl gives us a mechanism to spend more time with an album rather than skip to the next “hit”. 

I would like to think artists are trying to develop more albums now rather than just hit songs to capture streaming attention. Personally, with jazz old and new, I feel I often need the album format to begin to appreciate the music.
Andrew Tyson

Re: “Using the Dead of Tehran” by Lynne O’Donnell (TNW #471)

The academics quoted seem to have missed the well-documented calls for regime change and anti-regime actions in previous uprisings from December 2017 onwards, long before Reza Pahlavi’s involvement. They give the impression that there has been no serious discontent with the status quo until he stirred it up, whereas there is voluminous evidence to the contrary.

Much of this takes the form of graffiti and banners supporting the National Council of Resistance of Iran, mentioned by Rosalind Borley (Letters, TNW 468), which is often dismissed as having no support inside Iran. If so, why does such support carry the death penalty, and why is the regime taking the trouble to try 104 of its leaders in absentia?
Carolyn Beckingham

Re: Great Lives: Charles Schulz by John Osborne (TNW #471)

Such a gorgeous essay about an amazing artist. Art of whatever sort is about living a life and metabolising your own feelings and experiences in ways no one else – and certainly no machine – ever could.
Surekha Davies

Suggested Reading

Awards season is bad for cinema

John Bleasdale

Re: Awards season is bad for cinemas by John Bleasdale (TNW #471)

The “Uncle Oscar” anecdote has been around for years and is the theory that is generally accepted. I had never heard of any connection to Oscar Wilde either, so checked it out. 

There is an annual award ceremony held in Los Angeles called the Oscar Wilde Awards. They are by the US-Ireland Alliance and focus on “Irish arts and culture, and recognise achievements in Irish film, theatre, and other creative pursuits”. It is not the Academy Awards though.
Will Goble

BELOW THE LINE

Re: “Come on, Jeff” by Alan Rusbridger (TNW #471)

It’s all part of a pattern. However, I am intrigued by the mechanics of arse sucking. Is this something just for rich people? I am worried about researching this without my VPN.
Adrian Withill

Re: Dilettante by Marie Le Conte (TNW #471)

When I lived in France there was a bar-tabac in the local village. It was a safe place where the lonely could go for a glass of wine or a coffee. Come lunchtime (two hours), tradespeople would stop off for an aperitif before going home for lunch. Come the evening, for about two hours the place was humming with workers on their way home. It was a great meeting place.

Then the smoking ban came in, shortly followed by more robust drink-drive regulations. Within two years it could no longer support a living, and closed. The building is still empty. So beware the unintended consequences of controlling regulations.
Roy Speake

Re: Dilettante by Marie Le Conte (TNW #470)

May I add another recommendation re: classic French movies? Le Quai des Brumes. The 1939 version has been cleverly reworked by StudioCanal. Definitely a classic of its time, but well worth a viewing.
John Perkins