Les Bright, John Airs, John Parry and Mora McIntyre on the Guardian’s editorial endorsing the Labour party and John Harris’s epiphany; and Giles Oakley on the hope the party’s leader has given to many

It was a wonderful surprise to read the editorial calling on readers to back Labour on 8 June (The Tories run on fear and do not deserve our vote. Labour does because it offers hope, 3 June). I have read far too many unworthy character assassinations of Labour’s leader over the past two years, and had been preparing to end my long association with the paper because, put bluntly, with friends like you, who needs enemies?

There were a number of memorable passages in the carefully argued piece, but I was most struck by your assertion that he clearly likes people and is interested in them, as this seems to run entirely counter to the orientation so many politicians – across the party divide – now display in their dealings with the rest of us.

It would be churlish to list those who most obviously and consistently betray contempt for the electorate, but it is so very clear that the reason Corbyn may yet prevail – and Mrs May could get a huge shock – is because he has those qualities, and no matter how big the war chest, she cannot buy them.

Les Bright

Exeter

• Resisting the temptation to talk of nematodes turning, may I just say how cheering it was to read your editorial and John Harris’s epiphany (Corbyn has shown there’s a new way of doing politics. Straight talking is back, 3 June). Better late than never, but let’s hope it’s not all too late.

John Airs

Liverpool

• I read your editorial in which you supported the candidacy of the Trotskyite left for the premiership of the UK. That, of course, is your right. It is also my right to cancel my subscription to your paper after reading it for at least 50 years.

John Parry

Hungerford, Berkshire

• You fail to mention an important fact: the failure of the neoliberal project. Not surprising really as I don’t think, as a paper, you have abandoned it yet yourselves – hence the word “socialist” is still too frightening to utter. Another salient fact you fail to recognise, as you did with Bernie Sanders, is that both men have renewed people’s broken trust in politics. In Corbyn’s case, this is a direct result of a rare integrity and straightforwardness, along with his intention to serve the people’s interests before his own. This calibre of person is rarely found in politics and is something few of us have witnessed, especially recently. No wonder it inspires the young who look for hope, are more comfortable with change and instinctively recognise real strength as coming from wisdom – the wisdom to listen, hold to one’s values and neither slander nor bully.

Mora McIntyre

Hove

• I suppose I’m one of those who made some Jeremy Corbyn fans shy about their support (I used to be a shy Corbynite but I’m over that now, 2 June), having been vehemently critical of his leadership from the start. Now, however, I’m happy to acknowledge that he has led a brilliant campaign and given genuine hope to multitudes of people in a way no one else could have done. He’s rightly seen as someone who’s stuck to his principles through thick and thin, and Labour’s manifesto now expresses wider social values of a kind we can all get behind, wherever we place ourselves on the spectrum of left politics.

I will be voting Lib Dem tactically in Richmond Park, to help keep Zac Goldsmith out, but elsewhere I would urge everyone to vote Labour as a way of standing shoulder to shoulder with all those who believe in social justice and a more caring, compassionate society. I may never become a Corbynista, with all its faintly cultish connotations, but I could become a Corbynite. Anything to drive out the cold-eyed Theresa May and her repellent Tories.

Giles Oakley

London

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