Labour saved from jaws of death

Sir,

Every Labour MP must be making a sacrifice to the gods in gratitude for their party being plucked from the jaws of death and saved from a certain Armageddon in last week’s general election.

No doubt scholar Boris Johnson is also reflecting on that old Latin rendering, quos Deus vult perdere prius dementat – whom God wishes to destroy, he first makes mad – and wondering if the Tory manifesto was all a terrible nightmare.

A simple formula for a Tory landslide consigning Labour to the history books would have been not to erode the pledge of a cap on long-term care, not to means-test the winter fuel allowance and, inexplicably, do away with pension

guarantees, triple lock – truly a triple whammy against the elderly and most vulnerable in our so-called civilised society.

Not satisfied with this madness, they even turned the other end of the voting spectrum against them by offering the young absolutely nothing but pain.

Labour, though, offered utopia, saying it would not only abolish university tuition fees, but also reintroduce maintenance grants, free lunches for pupils and a minimum wage of £10 an hour. In addition, voting to be lowered to 16 – from a young voters’ perspective it was manna from heaven and made the Tories look like the nasty and out-of-touch party – for what was there to dislike from Labour’s offerings?

Added to all this was the prospect of further austerity and pain for the rest of the voting public – surely a Conservative perfect storm and a lesson on how to alienate voters. D J Haskell, Cardigan, Ceredigion.