Ed Miliband says he "has listened" to what the electorate wants, but his latest policy statement (Why I'll never hug a husky, 21 May) is nothing more than a rehash of his acceptance speech after winning the Labour party leadership. So what has he learned by listening?
He says the last Labour government "made mistakes", but it wasn't mistakes it made by adopting its ideological obsequiousness to big business. It accepted the precepts of the global financial institutions and believed, sailing blithely on the wave of incontinent consumer spending, that "boom and bust" were of the past. It is its failure to understand the incendiary characteristics of casino capitalism that led us into the present crisis.
His language, too, shows he hasn't understood the need for ideological change. Writing of giving people a chance to "get on the housing ladder" reveals the same blinkered thinking that characterised New Labour. Housing should be a right, and most people want simply a decent place to live. The ladder concept is a Thatcherite one and implies buying to invest, moving up the property and status chain; and that sort of thinking created the housing bubble in the first place.
Until Labour is able to offer people an alternative vision to the outdated form of capitalism we now have and imbue them with realistic hope of a society based on justice, fairness and stability, they will be doomed to repeat the sad history of social democracy throughout Europe.
John Green
London
• Amid all his talk of challenges, tasks, opportunities and missions, Ed Miliband omits any mention of Labour's most urgent priority: to identify, groom and promote his successor, preferably someone who won't mess around for two years trying to work out what he believes in and what the party ought to stand for.
Root Cartwright
Radlett, Hertfordshire
• Ben Rogers' recommendation that our leaders read Jane Jacobs' The Death and Life of Great American Cities is worrying (Comment, 20 May). Although Jacobs should be praised for her opposition to Robert Moses, her well-meaning plans for conservation neglect economic realities. The major flaw in her argument is the assumption that communities can be self-reliant without economic means, and I fear that the take-home message for our leaders would simply be that the poor can look after themselves without state support. Of course, Cameron's "big society" is premised on such a myth. Lewis Mumford's The City in History is also 50 this year, and I'd prefer our leaders to read his warnings about unchecked growth, the vast inequalities found in cities, and the need for redistribution of urban space.
Richard Gunn
York