Larry Elliott is right to say that “the left had its chance and blew it” after the economic crash, and right to identify the left’s lack of a clear and united narrative as one of the main reasons for this (Opinion, 30 August). Instead, the different strands of the left “all headed off in their own directions”, as Elliott says. It is worth exploring this in a little more detail and picking out two key problems.

One of the biggest obstacles to developing a common left framework was the fact that during the crisis, social democratic parties throughout Europe kept on going into right-led coalitions which were implementing cuts and austerity programmes. The subsequent collapses of the social democratic parties in Ireland, the Netherlands, France, Germany and other countries all bear witness to this.

The second big obstacle to forging a common left framework is the EU. This has become a major line of division on the left. The pro-integration left has yet to find a way of explaining how more progressive policies can be implemented in an EU whose economic policies have entrenched some of the neoliberal approaches that precipitated the crisis in the first place. However, the more Eurosceptic left equally has not found a way of explaining how a weakened EU can lead to progressive policies across Europe.

Until an effective way of advancing progressive reforms through the EU can be found, this will remain a significant hurdle for the European left.

Dr Michael Holmes

European Institute, Liverpool Hope University

• Larry Elliott, in lamenting the lack of radical change in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis, once again raises the question of how economics is taught. I would go further and question how it is measured. The fundamental flaw with economics is that it doesn’t assess the real value to society of a particular economic activity, just its financialisation. Value is determined by the market. In other words, it is subordinated to consumers who are easily manipulated, and sometimes addicted, by vested interests. There is a widely held, old-fashioned view that work should be, predominantly, in the common interest.

Governments should have a duty to consider action on all contested issues of social value by taking recommendations from a cross-party parliamentary committee, duly informed by expert opinion from across the spectrum of society – as is currently the case with energy drinks (Ministers to ban energy drink sales to children, 30 August).

If the government found a recommendation politically unsavoury, eg phasing out the sale of tobacco, the economics discipline should, nonetheless, adjust its macroeconomic metrics to reflect the true value to the country as assessed – or would this be too much of a progressive idea?

Geoff Naylor

Winchester, Hampshire

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