Labour is the only realistic option to win the next general election and counter the punitive policies inflicted on the least affluent people in the UK. My heart sinks at Ken Loach's attempts to sell Left Unity as a viable alternative (Labour is not the solution, 28 March). Look at our electoral system – no party other than Labour has a realistic chance of getting a majority and, whatever its faults, it offers the best and quickest way of getting rid of the current lot of small-minded, nasty, scapegoating politicians.

The "left" of UK politics has a history of splitting into smaller groups who are passionate about their beliefs but who will not get a majority at an election to implement those beliefs – people who would rather be "right" than in government. That partly explains why Thatcher was able to win on a minority of the votes of the electorate. I don't need an impassioned argument about the purity of Labour's policies – I'll stay in the Labour party and try to influence from within. I do need to have a Labour government in 2015 rather than the lot we have now – that's the choice.

Jan Hill

London

• Ken Loach is absolutely right to say that "Labour is part of the problem, not the solution" to the question "Where is our political fightback [against austerity]?" At the forthcoming local council elections the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC), co-founded by Bob Crow and, since 2012, officially backed by the RMT union, is organising the biggest left-of-Labour challenge in such elections since the immediate aftermath of the second world war. We already have 400 candidates in place, with more coming forward each day. The recently founded Left Unity group has been invited to participate in this election coalition, joining the anti-bedroom tax campaigners, trade union activists, and members of a number of different socialist organisations who will be standing under the TUSC umbrella in May. Possibly, together, we can reach the broadcasting authorities' threshold for "fair coverage" during the election period. This would be a breakthrough for the anti-austerity socialist message, which I'm sure Ken would support.

Clive Heemskerk

TUSC national election agent

• Ken Loach is wrong to be so dismissive of the Green party. Most of the policies he lists at the end of his article are supported by the Greens, and his call for a assertion of the public good accords with the Green party slogan "for the common good". Furthermore, the Green party has a social justice agenda and the infrastructure and volunteer activists to deliver it.

John Prior

Reading

• I can't help thinking Ken Loach is a little out of touch. He clearly feels the Labour manifesto of 1945 is a good starting point for political change in the 21st century. He goes on to say that the Labour government of '45 "chose not to realise that ambition" and that the task today "is to turn the words of the manifesto into reality". If the postwar government – with its enormous majority, a relatively large and homogeneous working class behind it and a powerful trade union movement – couldn't implement socialist ideals, what chance has Left Unity? The country was indebted to a large conscripted army and needed a co-operative manufacturing workforce. None of these factors exist now. The conditions for socialism were never more right than they were in 1945, and they are certainly not right today. You may not like the social and economic reality, Ken, but, as Marx might have said, it's got to be your starting point.

Arthur Gould

Loughborough, Leicestershire

• Ken Loach must realise the futility of trying to form a new party of the left at this stage of the electoral cycle. The crucial thing is to get the Tories out as soon as possible, and Labour, however feeble, is the only credible opposition we have. To attempt to divide it would be fatal. We have to persuade as many people as possible to use their vote to get a Labour majority. Then we must work to get a leader and cabinet who'll legislate to curb the activities of big business, the banks, landlords, the aristocracy and money-grubbers everywhere as ruthlessly as Thatcher did to get rid of the miners, the steelworkers, the shipbuilders and the rest of the politically active workers. Goodness knows there are so many people damaged by the effects of the Tory policies Ken mentions that they only need a credible promise to make things better for them to vote to get rid of every Tory MP outside of Kensington and Chelsea.

Tony Cheney

Ipswich, Suffolk

• The Labour thinktanks' call for a strategic change in direction towards more devolution of power (Letters, 24 March) is welcome, but it is only a start. If your report of Jon Cruddas's speech to Progress is accurate (25 March) – "a Labour government from 2015-20 has to be about redistributing power and not resources, he argues, because austerity makes cash handouts impossible and power becomes the new money" – there is still a long way to go. Power without resources is a contradiction in terms. And the attempt to justify this on the grounds of austerity, given the present degree of inequality in our society, is absurd. Labour must stand for the redistribution of resources, and therefore power, from large corporations to consumers, workers and local communities, and from central to local government. That would indeed be new politics.

Pat Devine

Manchester

• There is an easier way for Labour supporters to get behind an opposition party that represents their values than writing letters to a newspaper or using comment pieces to urge their leader to be more radical in policy (Polly Toynbee, 25 March) and bolder in approach (Diane Abbott, 26 March). They could simply join the Green party, which is already calling for the policies listed by Labour's thinktanks and others as offering a radical, progressive approach: introducing a national living wage; bringing the railways back into public ownership; and launching a major programme of investment to build more affordable homes. And, if you don't like any of our policies, we offer a far more democratic route to changing them than penning open letters: become a member and vote on policies at conference. Join us for a fairer and more progressive kind of politics.

Natalie Bennett

Leader, Green party of England and Wales