Seumas Milne's warning to Labour that now is the time to oppose the coalition's discredited ideology, "Better have that argument now than in the runup to an election", ends with the significant, if quiet, coda "it's not one that can be left to politicians alone" (The coalition's phoney war is an exercise in political fraud, 26 September). Well done the editor who placed it alongside Katharine Ainger's piece (A financial coup d'etat) on the Spanish indignados who, like the citizens of Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Italy and France, are taking to the streets in defence of democracy. Ainger ends with a reminder that 600,000 Portuguese swarming the gates of parliament and city centres forced their government into a U-turn. As FD Roosevelt said: "Democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself." We must ensure the citizens of the UK are out in their hundreds of thousands on 20 October in defence of our democracy.
John Airs
Liverpool
• Andrew Mitchell's behaviour is not only a comment on the Conservative party and the police (Editorial, 26 September). It also reflects wider problems with politics in the UK. Thinktanks and consultants now dominate the policy process and the political establishment imagines itself distinct from, indeed above, the rest of the country. We need a fundamental shift in the attitudes of the political elite and a new programme of action in which citizens are valued as co-creators of democracy, not simply voters, clients, protesters or volunteers.
Craig Jeffrey
Oxford
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