If flying the Union Jack and wearing suits is is the best Labour's leadership can do, then they are asking the wrong questions

I found this on the web a few minutes ago marked ‘unknown’. I find it difficult to believe that the Labour Party would create such a thing! Why? The message is fine but, like it or not, the Union Jack is associated by some in Wales and many in Scotland and Northern Ireland with English dominance. I have known this well for most of my 76 years, since I’m half-English half-Irish and I have close family connections with Scotland and Wales too. Labour has lost Scotland, so it is unlikely ever to govern the United Kingdom again on its own - a painful truth it seems determined not to recognise.

If Labour’s alleged ‘plan’ is ‘to focus on (the) flag and patriotism to win back voters’ (Guardian news story, 3 February), then perhaps the Party’s Parliamentary leadership has been asking the wrong questions.

If it's votes Labour is after, then they should stick with Jeremy Corbyn's policies, albeit better managed, and I say this being no fan of Corbyn as a leader, but then I have said this of all Labour's leaders, since I am suspicious of leaders full stop. I also say this because Corbyn got more votes in 2017 and 2019 than Blair did in 2001 and 2005. Way more than Brown in 2010 and Miliband in 2015. The trouble was Corbyn got votes in the wrong places and the Conservatives got more votes in every General Election between 2005 and 2019. Had Labour made less noise, despite an overwhelmingly anti-Labour press, I believe Corbyn could have run Theresa May closer. Before Corbyn there have a string of pre-elections fiascos for Labour (1992, Kinnock triumphalist speech in Sheffield a week before polling day; 2010 Brown's 'Stupid woman' and a few other things into an open microphone and in 2015 Milliband's tablet of stone) and thanks to Corbyn's nasty brigade they kept coming in 2017 and 2019 — now Keir Starmer seems determined to follow them all into the abyss.

From getting police commissioners and councillors to mayors and MPs elected, Labour has a high dependency on low turnouts. There are notable exceptions, but all these do is make the reality more stark. Tony Blair’s General Election successes depended on low turnouts. Perhaps Keir Starmer should ask ‘What will have to happen before turnouts become low enough for Labour to win again?’

What General Election data shows us is that Labour will struggle to win England and needs to adopt a strategy which embraces pluralism and few Labour politicians recognise this, Clive Lewis being an exception. I see no signs of this happening under the present Labour leadership.