Letter: Victorian values just don't work

Sir: You correctly suggest ("Is this a labour party, brother?", 17 September) that the Labour leadership is recreating the party as a Victorian Liberal Party. Socialist members like myself are asked to keep quiet until the Tories are ousted and to go along with Labour's weak, compromising policies. This is rather like asking a patient in need of urgent radical surgery to be content to lie in bed with a comforting hot-water bottle.

Just as Victorian liberalism proved inadequate for the needs of the disadvantaged, so predictably will a compromised new Labour. Which means that we shall have to start all over again by creating a radical socialist movement for the 21st century - but should the Labour leadership really be allowed to put us to all that trouble?

IAN FLINTOFF

London SW6