Election night 2019: Emily Thornberry, who was returned as MP for Islington South and Finsbury

• IT’S not my party, so maybe I shouldn’t comment, but Emily Thornberry’s bid for the Labour leadership would be more convincing if she’d had the moral courage to leave the shadow cabinet when Jeremy Corbyn made his decision to allow Boris Johnson a single-issue general election, (Thornberry: ‘We DID need a second referendum’, January 17).

If she thought that he was so wrong at the time and it would be disastrous for the country, as so many of us did, surely she should have resigned?

For many people it will be hard to forget or forgive Labour’s choice to enable an election on Brexit rather than a people’s vote, which has lumbered us not just with a poor leave deal and a rocky future but also five years of a massive Boris Johnson majority.

So which aspect of her character does Ms Thornberry now think makes her a suitable candidate for high office? Her inability to persuade friends and colleagues to her strongly held belief? Her lack of strength of conviction to do the right thing when they disagreed? Her ability to apply 20:20 hindsight after it’s all gone horribly wrong?

Or just her stated preference for the outdated first-past-the-post system that gave the Tories that majority, despite more than half the country voting for parties committed to a people’s vote?

ANDREW MYER
Islington Green Party