IT is good to see that the Labour Party under the great knight of the realm Sir Keir Starmer is doing everything it can to win back votes that it lost from older people while at the same time holding on to the votes of young people.

Jeremy Corbyn has effectively been purged, despite not breaking any rules and at a recent meeting of the Labour Party’s National Executive Committee supporters of Starmer have managed to install 77-year-old Dame Margaret Beckett as chair, thus taking greater control of the party.

Dame Margaret was a left winger in her youth, but she was a particularly right-wing Foreign Secretary between 2006-2007 who, alongside Prime Minister Tony Blair, refused to call for a ceasefire during the brutal Israeli invasion of Lebanon.

She was once heckled on BBC Question Time when the Daily Telegraph exposed the fact that between 2004 and 2008 she claimed £72,537 on a house in her constituency on which there was no mortgage and no rent due.

She also was able to rent out her own flat in London, while living in grace and favour accommodation. In addition, she managed to claim £600 for hanging baskets and pot plants. With such people in charge of the party it is only a matter of time before the working class returns to Labour in droves.

John Gilmore, Bishop Auckland.