Election aftermath

10:26am Monday 12th May 2008

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NEIL Griffin displays the lack of understanding shown nationally by the Labour Party in his patronising letter (HAS, May 8).

It is not the residents of Bearpark, Brasside, Framwellgate Moor, Pity Me and Witton Gilbert who did themselves a disservice in the recent local unitary council election. It was the Labour Party.

Not only did they press ahead with an election for a council which the people rejected, but they relied yet again on the slavish vote of the unthinking majority. Today's voter is so different. Today's voter listens to a well presented argument and, undoubtedly, the Liberal Democrats won the debate.

If Labour's George Burlinson was a victim of anything it was not frustration and disappointment, it was " the arrogance of office" which was prevalent amongst the old county council.

Mr Griffin does not display the triangulation encouraged by Gordon Brown, that is the interchange of ideas between new and old Labour.

It is this intransigence which is eating away at Labour support nationally.

Labour will have to do more than listen to win again, and the electorate is fully aware of this.

Colin T Mortimer, Pity Me, Durham.

I LAUGHED when I read Gordon Brown had said that he should give people more power.

This from the most power-hungry, centralising bureaucracy-creating person of the last decade or so.

If we are to believe him then the results of the referendum on the unitary authority for Durham would have been honoured and we would also have a referendum on the EU constitution.

M Hawkins, Langley Park, Durham.