Messrs Jones and Mackenzie’s responses (Immigration facts and Reason for the result, Letters, March 6) to my letter (Labour’s meltdown, February 28) are incorrect and reinforce my point that many within the party and outside of it are in denial about the reason’s for Labour’s electoral meltdown.

Mr Jones point regarding the EU “setting minimum standards so that local workers are not undercut by foreign workers with lower labour standards” is incorrect. The reason the UK had increased migration from Eastern European countries such as Poland and Romania was because these countries, among others in the EU, had substantially lower wage rates.

This influx of workers undeniably exerted a downward pressure on UK wage rates in all sectors, but especially in the care, construction and retail sectors. This problem was compounded by many agencies, for example, advertising vacancies solely in Polish, which excluded UK nationals from applying.

Mr Mackenzie’s point regarding the public having “a final say because Parliament was making slow progress and couldn’t make their minds up whether to accept Prime Minister May’s Withdrawal Agreement or to reject it.” does not bear reasonable scrutiny. MPs had already voted unanimously to invoke Article 50, which meant that we had already left the EU. The only possible function of a second referendum would be to decide whether it was Theresa May’s deal or ‘no deal’.

READ MORE: The real reason for Labour's election failure

The result of the EU Referendum was ‘binding’ on the UK Government and the second referendum policy was a ruse by Remainers within the Labour Party to sabotage the Referendum result.

Mr Mackenzie’s assertion that “the real reason for a Labour defeat and a Conservative victory was a formal agreement between the Brexit Party and the Conservative Party” is without merit. The Brexit Party’s share of the vote in former Labour heartlands was derisory, as many former Labour voters who wanted Brexit and felt disenfranchised by Labour’s stance on this issue took the decision with heavy hearts to vote Tory for the first time in their lives.

Labour failed its own core support through its free movement of people policy, which undermined local wage rates and kept many UK workers in unnecessary poverty just so that many in the Labour Party could virtue signal their internationalist credentials.

If these Labour Party members were really internationalist they could not support a protectionist EU that imposes tariffs on imports from Commonwealth countries and places their workers in poverty.

It is no coincidence that the Remain-supporting Labour candidates in the Watford and South West Hertfordshire constituencies - neither of whom actually lived in these respective constituencies - lost. If Labour fails to learn the lessons of this defeat, then they will be doomed to electoral oblivion.

Ian Kirkham,

The Queens Drive, Chorleywood