Your editorial (6 May) is absolutely right to warn that Labour must avoid premature infighting – but what do we find on the opposite page? Jonathan Freedland’s article, headlined No more excuses – Corbyn is to blame for this meltdown. The general election is still five weeks away and you want to start the post-mortem now?

One question: how is it that some democratic votes must never be challenged but others can be trashed, with no regard for how overwhelming or underwhelming they might have been?

Everyone seems to assume that Ukip’s likely demise is due to voters believing the party to be redundant now that its main purpose has been achieved. Personally, I think it is more likely to have been caused by Ukip’s recent, very public implosion, with three leaders in as many months, public punch-ups and high-profile defections.

That is why many voters have deserted Labour too. Surely, with only five weeks to go before the election, Corbyn’s opponents could manage to stay silent. If they must keep plotting, perhaps they could turn their attention to his successor, because it will be a herculean task to find a suitable person to repair the damage done to Labour by Labour. It goes without saying that none of them need apply, because they will be for ever tainted and rightly blamed for the perilous state the party is now in.

Catherine MacKinnon

Breakish, Isle of Skye

No more excuses: Jeremy Corbyn is to blame for this meltdown | Jonathan Freedland Read more

• While Jonathan Freedland may be right that many former Labour voters have been put off by Jeremy Corbyn, his explanation doesn’t add up. He dismisses the responsibility of the media for repeated character assassination of Corbyn on the basis that, in the focus groups he witnessed, “few of the participants ever bought a paper and they seldom watched a TV bulletin”. If they didn’t get their information through the media, how did they “form their own, perhaps instinctive, view”? As they are unlikely to have met Corbyn in person or attended his rallies, it is probable that they have been influenced by negative media treatment either directly or through relatives, friends or acquaintances who do follow the media.

On the doorstep, when canvassing for excellent local Labour candidates, I’ve encountered similar responses on a couple of occasions. One former Labour voter described Corbyn as ignorant and another called him useless; however, when challenged, they were unable to give any examples of these supposed deficiencies. This suggests to me that the media onslaught, confirmed in academic studies, has succeeded in its character assassination of Corbyn.

Nick Spencer

Leamington Spa, Warks

• Jonathan Freedland’s article is an enormously simplifying first draft of history. Multiple polls reported that Labour was catching up with the Conservatives in the spring and early summer of 2016 (with four polls in the first half of June registering that the gap had shrunk to 1%-3%). But in late June, there were mass shadow cabinet resignations, a motion of no confidence in Corbyn passed by the large majority of Labour MPs and the initiation of a new leadership contest. Labour’s poll rating plummeted in July and August 2016, and has never really recovered since then.

The failed coup was an act of serious self-harm. But this is not to replace one scapegoat, Corbyn, with another – Labour MPs. Labour’s crisis has multiple causes, of which the most important is a failure to come up with a compelling social democratic alternative to global neoliberalism and rightwing populism. It is a shared problem that progressives, including both Labour left and right and supporters of other parties, need to overcome in order to prevent a long period of rightwing ascendancy. Internecine assaults are an energy-sapping substitute for doing this.

Professor James Curran

Goldsmiths, University of London

Andy Burnham: ‘This is Jeremy Corbyn’s moment’ Read more

• Labour is polling at 27% thanks to Jeremy Corbyn, not despite him. In the most recent Dutch general election, the Labour party received 5.7%, and the French Socialist candidate won 6.4% in the first round of the presidential election. Without Corbyn, there would be even less reason to vote Labour. People in focus groups do not always tell the truth. We are faced with a tidal wave of post-Brexit nationalism but that is less easy to talk about than blaming Labour’s leader for your electoral choice. No putative Labour leader could resist this mood any better than Corbyn.

Nick Matthews

Rugby

• Jonathan Freedland is right. Many of my friends who want to vote against this awful government feel unable to vote Labour because of Corbyn. So, yes, Corbyn is to blame for this meltdown – but he is not the sole culprit.

In the summer of 2010 Labour’s deputy leader, Harriet Harman, allowed six months for the party to elect a new party leader. In the process she gave the post-election narrative of Labour’s economic incompetence to the Tories.

Despite his best efforts, Ed Miliband failed to return the party to power in 2015 – and his decision to change the eligibility rules for voting in leadership elections paved the way for the return of entryism in Labour affairs. Following defeat, Miliband stood down immediately instead of staying on to provide stability. When the subsequent party leadership election was held some MPs thought it would be nice to lend their nomination votes to Corbyn.

Finally, there are those close to Corbyn who are indulging him in thinking that the British working class is prepared to wait while he rebuilds Labour in his own image. It is not.

Notwithstanding all this and more, I will vote Labour despite Corbyn, because I believe in the party’s core values and in order to help my local party rebuild after the general election.

Derek Mckiernan

Edinburgh

• Friday saw a number of vignettes that will almost certainly be repeated as 8 June and the next collision with the electorate draw near: Diane Abbott barely drawing breath to contradict herself on Labour losses, John McDonnell offering comfort by saying at least it wasn’t a wipeout in Wales, a Momentum rally to which the constituency MP and the new mayor were not invited in advance advertised online at four hours’ notice. A basic level of competence and coherence is expected by voters of a party serious about power. It has come to something when only the Conservatives can voice the concept of Jeremy Corbyn as prime minister. Now we are promised more of John McDonnell in the campaign. I am not sure this will do a great deal of good. Self-delusion never seems far away from self-indulgence, especially in the face of overwhelming evidence at the ballot box.

Andy Sellers

Stockport

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