As a Labour member, and former councillor, I share Polly Toynbee’s despair at the party’s vacillation on Europe (Labour must back remain or hand victory to the Faragists, 14 May) and the leadership’s refusal to see the world as it really is rather than as they would like it to be. Anyone who has campaigned for Labour in these Euro elections will be aware of the haemorrhage of Labour voters and of members it has brought about.

She says there is “still time for Labour to pivot towards wholehearted support for a referendum”. I hope she is right, but the party has left Farage and his noxious politics largely unchallenged for the past three years in the vain hope of retaining votes in “leave” areas. This unprincipled position has not convinced leavers, who now support the Brexit party en masse, while Labour remainers have been left stranded.

It will be an enormous task to win back the trust of remain voters before next week’s election, let alone to win back leave voters. Many people have already voted by post, so any change of heart will be too late for them. Labour needs to act urgently to prevent it being crushed on Thursday and to present a positive case for Europe. Like other remainers, I have toyed with the idea of voting for an overtly remain party next week, but I will vote Labour – not least to support our two sitting London Labour MEPs, Claude Moraes and Seb Dance, whose work on issues such as migrant rights and climate change demonstrates the vital importance of our continuing EU membership.

Rosemary Sales

Hackney, London

• Labour supporters who care about the future of the EU face a second dilemma in the election to the European parliament, apart from the one Polly Toynbee rightly points out. A vote cast for one of the openly remain smaller parties is one vote less for a sufficient number of Labour MEPs to increase the chances of Frans Timmermans, the Spitzenkandidat of the centre-left, to become the new president of the European commission – a better prospect for any remain-and-reform tendency than the centre-right candidate Manfred Weber. Of course, if the advice contained in the headline of the article were followed by the Labour leadership, this second dilemma would automatically go away.

Harry Schneider

Mill Hill, London

• “There is no one else to resolve this but voters themselves,” says Polly Toynbee. But there is more to it than that. This is the people’s Brexit, not parliament’s. On this one issue at least, we, the electorate, are the sovereign body – the boss. We made the decision; we mandated parliament to come up with a plan and implement it. So we, “the people”, now have every right to scrutinise that plan (if one should ever materialise) and, if we see fit, amend it or even abandon the whole idea. If I commission my builder to create an extension to my home, don’t I have the right to confirm, amend or reject his design before he starts laying the bricks?

Tim Shelton-Jones

Brighton, East Sussex

• I had hoped that Jeremy Corbyn would get the message from his remain supporters in the local elections but he chose to interpret Labour losses as an indication that the majority of voters wanted Brexit delivered. This has made it impossible for me to vote Labour in the European elections – widely seen as a proxy referendum – for fear that my vote be misconstrued as an endorsement of Labour’s current policy on Brexit. The surge in support for Nigel Farage underlines the fact that the EU debacle is now becoming a fight for the soul of this nation and Jeremy Corbyn needs urgently to make clear where Labour stands.

Susan Newton

Oldham, Lancashire

• Re Polly Toynbee’s opinion piece, I wrote similar misgivings to my MP. His reply caused several eyebrows to be raised at the breakfast table: “I am afraid that I do not think that Jeremy will ever be a strong advocate of this position or of the case for remain. To be fair to him, he has been a Eurosceptic throughout his career.”

Ian Garner

Keighley, West Yorkshire

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