I have always voted and still remember the pride I felt when I did so for the first time so many years ago now. My dad was a factory worker and my mum a cleaner, and they voted Labour; so I voted Labour – and I did so in every national and local election until 2010, when Gordon Brown lost my vote. In the past I’ve been a member of the party and active for a brief period in my local ward. Now, however, and after much reflection, I don’t feel Labour represents me any longer and I won’t be voting for them again for the foreseeable future. I believe that the metropolitan types who now run Labour hold white working-class people like me in contempt – and that feeling is now returned with interest. However Mark Reckless is regarded by his party since his defection to Ukip (Rochester dispatch, 30 September), he has been a good local MP. If I can’t bring myself to vote Labour any more – and hell would freeze over before I’d vote Tory – I’m going to lend Ukip my vote in the forthcoming Rochester & Strood byelection and I hope they win.

Ralph Jones

Rochester, Kent

• Vote Ukip, get Labour; vote for the Tories and get hypocrites. The alternative vote system would have allowed right-of-centre voters to put Conservative and Ukip as their first and second choices (or second and first) without giving Labour a look-in. Yet the same Tory ministers who insisted it wasn’t worth changing an inadequate system to prevent vote splitting are now saying that to achieve the same effect we should vote for a party we are dissatisfied with. Drastic action would indeed be needed to secure a Tory majority in 2015. The only plausible objection to AV was the increased risk of a hung parliament. But with the prospect of a second consecutive hung parliament under the existing system, how much weight can we place on that? Unless the Lib Dems and Labour are looking to outdo the Conservatives in the hypocrisy stakes and reveal that their interest in reform was simply for short-term party advantage, they should join the Tories in putting a revised form of AV through parliament in time for the next general election.

John Riseley

Harrogate, North Yorkshire