Blairite is not a dirty word – Labour’s shadow cabinet can now challenge the Tories

Yvette Cooper has been forensically exact in her knowledge and understanding of key issues as chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee. She is an intelligent, thoughtful and principled politician; her values and commitment to the common good are clear for all to see. The wealth of her experience, in government and opposition, makes her promotion to the shadow cabinet most welcome. Unlike those she will be facing on the government benches, she is always well-briefed and precise when calling others to account.

For John McDonnell to brand her and others with the tribal and simplistic epithet “Blairite” while suggesting her appointment is backward-looking is both unhelpful and, ironically, stuck in the past. He and other similarly disposed party members should recognise that more important issues are at stake than continuing with short-sighted internal party wrangling.

Labour – along with other opposition parties – needs to put aside its parochial differences and work consistently to remove this dangerous Tory government. The urgent need to reclaim our democracy is more important than dreaming of a society for which the electorate will no longer vote.

Graham Powell

Cirencester

It was utterly heartbreaking to read Shaun Lintern’s article (“Dying patients are going without care as community nurses are ‘on their knees’”, News, 29 November) about the International Community Nursing Observatory investigation into district nursing services.

Sadly, this is not surprising. Our own exclusive research with Nursing Standard found that one-third of nurses responding to the survey said staffing levels were the main barrier to providing good end-of-life care. The workforce is being pushed to breaking point.

Throughout the pandemic, community nursing has seen a huge surge in demand, with people encouraged to stay out of hospitals and protect the NHS, but at the same time many have not been getting the support they need at home.

With more people dying at home and an ageing population, the demand on nurses in the community is only set to increase. Shockingly, there is no clear plan for ensuring people dying at home get the support they need. We can’t allow people to die at home, in pain and unsupported. What is needed now is real reform of health and social care to ensure nurses are fully supported and people are getting the care they need.

Everyone deserves to have a good end of life, and district and community nurses play a crucial role in this.

Julie Pearce

Marie Curie chief nurse and executive director of quality and caring services

I must take Jenny Eclair up on the comparison she made between attending bomb shelters and the non-compliance of mask wearers and anti-vaxxers (“Should we plod on or panic in the face of the new omicron variant?”, Voices, 30 November). I remember my family not going to the bomb shelters, which were awful places and not, as subsequently presented, a place of patriotic sing-songs. I remember being told to sit under a solid oak dining table at home instead. Only my family would suffer by their own actions.

A better analogy would be those who demanded the freedom to leave their curtains open and lights on. Bombers using this as a target would take out at least 20 houses. As with Covid taking hold in an individual who has not taken sensible precautions, the infection will spread to other innocents.

Perhaps we need the modern equivalent of the Home Guard – a Virus Guard to tackle those not wearing masks or not willing to show a vaccine passport. They should be escorted back to their homes and effectively placed under house arrest. If you do not behave in a socially responsible way, you do not deserve to be part of that society.

Robert Murray

Nottingham

Recently I was “pinged” by the test and trace app. I had to isolate until getting a negative PCR test. Many people suggested that I should have deleted the app. Believe me, before going to the concert where I caught Covid, I had thought about it but forgot to do it. I shudder to think how many friends, family and acquaintances I could have infected.

I have kept the app. Let’s use the app and masks and do our best to stop the rampage of this awful virus.

Maureen Holland

Godalming, Surrey

The furore over migration is unfathomable. Britain has left the EU. The impacts of such a decision are yet to be seen, especially in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic when many countries have imposed lockdowns and further travel restrictions. The sirens are sounding. Our universities rely on foreign students for money, while hospitals are buckling under the strain of underfunding and understaffing.

So why are we lamenting migration? Humanity has taught us that we are stronger when we are together and united. Time to restore trust and social justice and inspire hope. If the government is unable to accommodate more migrants, why not tackle the underlying drivers of migration in the first place?

Dr Munjed Farid Al Qutob

London NW2

Never mind cinema, the fashion for gender-swapping of male to female roles in theatre has been playing out for some years, leaving Shakespeare in particular in the firing line, not least because he left so few really meaty roles for female actors. Interestingly, one of the most powerful female roles in Shakespeare is the gender-bending Rosalind in As You Like It.

There are obvious historical reasons for the paucity of strong female roles, but trying to create more powerful female characters in Shakespeare by gender-swapping can be tricky. There is also some justification for “authentic” all-male productions of Shakespeare. Edward Hall’s wonderful Propeller company has done it with great skill and wit. But the issue for directors ought not to be current fashion, but what significant insights gender-swapping will bring and how dramatically convincing will it be.

Harriet Walter was an excellent Brutus in a Donmar Julius Caesar, within a convincing framing of a production set in a women’s prison. Tamsin Greig predictably gave a powerful Malvolia with a surprising gay subtext in a National Theatre Twelfth Night. By contrast, the height of absurdity was reached in another London production in which Hamlet, Laertes and Horatio were played by women, and Ophelia by a young male actor, not helped by Hamlet being a very small woman and Ophelia a lanky youth. Of course, acting is all about pretending to be something that you are not. But a total lack of what the French in theatre call vraisemblance, or truth to life, can completely destroy a great play like Hamlet.

What effect these sometimes capricious gender swaps in cinema and theatre have on impressionable young audiences looking for role models is anyone’s guess.

Gavin Turner

Norfolk