The tragedy of the Labour party is not so much the deficiencies of Ed Miliband's leadership (Labour must confront the 'Ed problem', 20 June), but the absence of any meaningful dialogue with the people it claims to represent. Rather than engaging in discussion with its traditional supporters, listening to them and taking their problems seriously, the party revolves around Westminster gossip, is in thrall to the media, and rewards the bright young things from Oxbridge who regard a seat in parliament as a career rather than a commitment to serve others. Week after week the Labour leadership boasts of how it will be tougher than the Tories – on immigrants, on welfare benefits, on public spending: in a word, the poor. What we never get are thought-out policies and political principles on social housing, higher taxes on the rich, rolling back the privatisation of the NHS, the abolition of nuclear weapons and returning the railways to public ownership. The list is almost endless. What does the Labour party stand for? Unless the answer is something better than a vacuous belief in "fairness", why should anyone vote for it?

Jacob Ecclestone

Diss, Norfolk

• We've have heard a lot this week about the condition of Britain. The widespread insecurity reflected in the Poverty and Social Exclusion project (Poverty doubled in 30 years, 19 June) illustrates starkly the structural nature of the problem. In contrast, the IPPR report (A blueprint for renewal, 19 June) seems to amount to no more than tinkering in an effort to manage a broken social policy and to shade the differences between the coalition and Labour in the run-up to the election. It seems the only people unwilling to use the word inequality are politicians and their advisers.

Neil Blackshaw

Little Easton, Essex