Benn vs Corbyn

Boris Johnson is wrong to compare Jeremy Corbyn to Tony Benn. Despite similar ideologies, both were worlds apart.

Benn may have been a great orator and writer, but he can never be forgiven for encouraging the mass infiltration of his own party by its enemies, battling restlessly with every Labour leader he served under to turn blind eyes to Marxist cultists and Trotskyite thugs infiltrating branches, leading ultimately to their “bridging” group Militant.

Like parasitic wasps, they paralysed before devouring their helpless hosts from within: party and union branches, local authorities, everything they touched; destroying in a decade what had taken almost a century to nurture – and the electorate’s trust resultant – all for the sake of dated dogma.

Benn cared not a damn, just so long as they drove out the

Social Democrats who stood between him and his leadership delusions. Corbyn, by contrast, has encouraged the mass membership party which Dr David Owen foretold long ago would dilute vanguards from all Toytown revolutionaries right out of the equation forever and maintain electorate confidence.

The rest, as they say, is deliciously ironic history – and perhaps also that yet to come.

MARK BOYLE Linn Park Gardens Johnstone, Renfrewshire

Like most working class families after the war members of mine were staunch Labour Party supporters. I recall the late Jimmy Reid stating : “You could put a Labour tag on a collie dog and they would still vote Labour.”`

Those days are long gone with the general attitude being: it doesn’t matter who you vote for, they’re are all the same! Well, I have found the person who I will be voting for – Jacob Rees-mogg, who I have yet to see him being beaten on any debate on TV, and at

the Tory Party conference he is the most popular person, the one they all want to listen to.

JOHN CONNOR David Henderson Court

Dunfermline, Fife