• I AGREE with Messrs Rosser and Edlin that Labour should never have agreed to this year’s election (May would have been left damaged by election snub, April 21).

When I heard that it had, I thought: “Into the valley of death rode the six hundred” or rather the 229, being the number of Labour MPs at dissolution. The comparison is inexact: the Light Brigade did not know beforehand that it was to be annihilated.

What is disheartening is that Labour had no good reason to give Ms May what she wanted. Labour voted to trigger Article 50, although most of its MPs knew it was crazy, because it felt it must respect the result of the referendum, but I can see no reason for it to have agreed to the election other than a fear of being called “chicken” if it had not.

Previous correspondents have said the election was called because, unless the opinion polls are quite wrong, the Conservatives will increase their majority. That has been the case for months yet Ms May stated until last month that there would be no election.

I suspect the real reason she changed her mind was she realised it is no longer possible to honour pledges in her party’s 2015 manifesto not to increase tax or national insurance and to keep the pensions’ triple lock until 2020. I write this before the Conservatives’ 2017 manifesto has appeared.

It would be poetic justice if pensioners wholly dependent on the state pension, a majority of whom voted leave, were to suffer financially from their own stupidity, although hard cheese on those who voted remain. I am not wholly dependent on the state pension.

STEPHEN HORNE
Romilly Road, N4