HOW ironic that Jeremy Corbyn should seek to lecture others on the essentials of democracy.

When it became clear in the run up to the 1983 election that Labour was in for a trouncing, Arthur Scargill, backed by Corbyn’s self-declared mentor and political idol Tony Benn, threatened that should Mrs Thatcher be returned to power “by parliamentary means”, which she was with a landslide, then those on the hard left would ensure that she was ousted “by extra-parliamentary means”.

A clearer attack on the most fundamental aspect of all in democracy, that of respecting the will of the people as expressed through the ballot box, it would be impossible to find.

Stephen Dalby, Mill Farm, Yapham