As a member of the Labour Party since before Jeremy Corbyn was born, let alone politically active, I am no 'Corbynista'. Yet I voted twice for him as leader, in full knowledge of his strengths and weaknesses.

Yes, he has weaknesses, but he does not deserve the vilification to which he has been subjected, echoed by Brett Ellis (Labour Party should look inwards to see why it lost, February 13).

Over the years he has been right far more often than wrong. He was right on Afghanistan (9/11 was a crime, not an act of war, and should have been responded to as such, using the mechanisms of international law). Surely not many now justify the illegal war on Iraq. He was right in opposing austerity, including the previous Labour government's austerity-light. He was and is right in opposing the UK's Trident megadeath machine, and to declare that he would never be responsible for mass murder by pressing the "red button". As for "patriotism", what could be more patriotic than not wanting to send our young men and women to kill and risk being killed in those illegal wars?

Mr Ellis accuses Labour of failing to tackle racism (strangely, he does not mention anti-Semitism, which is the more usual charge), but the whole history of the Labour Party belies this. Jeremy Corbyn has always been on the side of the underdog, though underdogs are not necessarily themselves wholly admirable. In particular, he is a passionate supporter of the Palestinian cause, which is a just cause. He has perhaps been naive in choosing his allies in that cause, but that does not equate to anti-Semitism. There may be a fine line between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, but there is a distinction. I fully understand the "never again" syndrome in relation to the Holocaust, and Jews' belief that only a state of their own can guarantee that. But I find it profoundly sad that the survivors and descendants of Holocaust victims should believe they can only achieve that by force, at the expense of others.

Labour lost the election for many reasons, and I could write much more about them, but space does not permit. However, I certainly do not accept Mr Ellis's analysis or his demand for wholesale rejection of the policies on which the election was fought.

Frank Jackson

Harlow Labour Party