Ailbhe Rea’s feature (Cover Story, 16 January) about a potential Labour leadership contest and what the party must do to regain control was illuminating, although a somewhat despondent read. The proposals mentioned to fend off Reform didn’t acknowledge the fundamentals; the majority of those considering voting Reform will not give Labour a hearing unless immigration plummets and is demonstrably under control.
But reflecting on the bigger picture, would it not be more productive to concentrate energies on upping the levels of competency, of basic good governance; work out why certain change levers don’t quite work and fix them; or focus on getting past the blockers (the ignoble behaviour of the Lords was spotlighted earlier in the magazine by Ethan Croft in his politics column)?
Those of us who had high hopes for the new administration in July 2024 have found the first 18 months extremely disappointing. Prospects don’t look encouraging for this government to make the sort of difference which voters will notice and feel as they enter the polling station at the next general election.
Michael Haskell , Broughton, Flintshire
Change or chaos
Ailbhe Rea says that many at the top of the Labour Party think a leadership contest “… would be an unconscionable act of self-harm, consigning Labour to the electoral fate of the Conservatives – tarnished by a reputation for chaos”. Methinks we are past that point as surely the “reputation for chaos” is already well and truly here. Perhaps the way of moving beyond chaos is a change of leadership.
Jol Miskin, Sheffield
Bring the House down
I read Ethan Croft’s article on the House of Lords with interest, and listed all the usual reasons the unelected second chamber shouldn’t exist in 2026: the Lords have no mandate; they are an undemocratic impediment; too many MPs fail upwards, and so on. And then I realised all that is what we’ve heard a thousand times before – and there’s been next to no reform of the place in so long.
Without wishing to sound to like Citizen Smith, I genuinely believe the best course of action is for the people to simply get organised and find a way to close it down through peaceful means. No more earls and dukes lording it over the plebs; no more handouts for failed politicians; no more frankly ludicrous favours for the PM’s chums. And that might put right the fact that the Lords was ever allowed to exist at all.
Max Harrison, Saltburn-by-the-Sea, Yorkshire
Age of dictators
Unsurprisingly, as a former editor of the Financial Times, Lionel Barber writes a compelling Diary (16 January). My choice for a “name which encapsulates the new era” was prompted by the American poet James Russell Lowell who used the term in 1876. It’s been applied since to the governments of Russia’s Yeltsin and Putin, Egypt’s Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, the Philippines under Rodrigo Duterte, Brazil under Jair Bolsonaro, and the Trump administrations. If only “Dictators’ days” were numbered: Netanyahu, Putin, Trump and the RSF in Sudan continue.
Lowell, the poet, asked: “Is ours a ‘government of the people by the people for the people’, or a Kakistocracy rather, for the benefit of knaves…?” Trump’s USA, aided and abetted by actors such as Stephen Miller, Elon Musk and even Karoline Leavitt is indeed a kakistocracy: government by the worst people.
David Murray, Wallington, Surrey
Me time
As an alternative to “the New Imperialism”, has Lionel Barber considered “Neo-Narcissists” vying for control of the “Egosphere”?
Austen Lynch, Garstang, Lancashire
Stand up for Albion
Nicholas Harris’s (This England, 16 January) description of Burton Albion FC as “runtish” (puny, weak, or smaller than the rest of the birth litter) is insulting and inaccurate.
By his own admission, he had “never stood up at a match before”: his lazy association of open terraces with extremism and hooliganism is an insult to those of us who have stood at football matches for decades without even witnessing, let alone participating in either.
James Simister, Brighton
Le Carré’s realism
Nicholas Harris points out a vast difference between the BBC’s new The Night Manager series and the first series (The New Society, 16 January) – and how the show struggles to harness the “distinct space and time and temper” of post-imperial British decline.
However, Le Carré’s worlds were entirely based on the contemporary facts of his circumstances and his research. Another perspective on the new television series might be: if Le Carré was researching and writing now, would his novels be able to conjure anything more profound and complex than the dross we’re witnessing in the news? The answer is yes: beyond the glorified violence of cartels and arms trading is a landscape dominated by misinformation, shoddy intelligence structures and cybersecurity threats. I don’t disagree with Harris, but let’s not be nostalgic about Le Carré’s characters’ historical environments; let’s consider how he would have translated those of the present into accurate and realistic fictions.
Jessica Douthwaite, London
A healthy shake for breakfast
Pippa Bailey’s piece on weight-loss drugs (Out of the Ordinary, 16 January) brings to mind my late godmother, a stout and maiden lady of remarkably fixed views. When I stayed with her some 40 years ago at her property in the Highlands, where she employed a number of staff, she would drink a glass of Complan at breakfast time, followed by porridge, a plate of fried food, toast and oatcakes. This was to the silent amusement of her workforce, and despite the assurances of relations and friends that the shake was intended to replace, rather than accompany, the morning meal.
Tom Stubbs, Surbiton, Surrey
A Hamnet red herring
In David Sexton’s excellent review of Hamnet (The New Society, 16 January), he points out various anachronisms in the film, seemingly included by the director Chloé Zhao as part of her aim for “metamorphosis” and “alchemy”. He would look long and hard for anachronisms in Maggie O’Farrell’s brilliant original novel. The author has described in interviews how she ruthlessly excised them by poring over the Oxford English Dictionary, checking the dates of first usage of words or of phrases in their current-day meaning.
What he will find is an apparent geographical error. A key chapter – tracing the journey of the plague that kills Hamnet – has a ship docking in the port of Aleppo, an inland city now and then. But this is no error but a deliberate Easter egg planted by the author in a nod to the great bard’s own “shaky” grasp of geography.
Graham Fulcher, Reigate, Surrey
Kindred spirits
When I subscribed to the NS about a year ago, I wondered what the point of Nicholas Lezard’s contribution was. I soon got it! It’s one of the first pages I turn to and, though older and, yes, somewhat wealthier, I get where he’s coming from: his relationships, his despairs, his understanding (or not) of life’s idiosyncrasies. All it takes is a few well-chosen words, an apposite remark, and I chuckle and feel there is hope in and for humanity after all.
Jill Cadorath, Exeter
Sparks notes
Perhaps you can ask Nicholas Lezard to reconsider spending £100 every year on a pair of black Levi’s 501s. I (naively) assumed he had joined the growing boycott of US goods. Of equal importance, he can get much cheaper jeans from his local M&S. My M&S pair – admittedly not size 30×30 and only worn on alternate weeks – have lasted over two years and have no holes.
Richard Worrall, Maidenhead
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This article appears in the 21 Jan 2026 issue of the New Statesman, Europe is back
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