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President-elect Emmanuel Macrons success in France against a far-right opponent suggests voters from different camps are prepared to rally around a moderate candidate from the centre. Photograph: POOL/Reuters

Will Hutton mentions creating a new party in a throwaway line at the end of his column on why the future for progressive politics looks less than inviting (Never in my adult life has the future looked so bleak for progressives, Comment).

This should not be an afterthought. It is the one bright spot of hope in a desolate landscape and one that progressive media outlets such as the Observer should be championing. If 8 June sees Theresa Mays Conservatives returned to power, then moderate Labour, Lib Dem and Green politicians should finally agree to form a single progressive party and stop splitting the anti-Tory vote, as they have done since 1945.

A beneficial side-effect of such a realignment will be that Jeremy Corbyns hard-left Labour will not join and can become marginalised by a much larger and more electable force. The left-of-centre party activists have become detached from their voters witness the haemorrhaging of support from the Lib Dems after entering a coalition with the Tories that was opposed by many and the way that lifelong Labour supporters are deserting Corbyn.

What we need now is undeniable evidence to confirm that voters are crying out for change and political leaders with the backbone to put country before party and listen to them.

David Vigar Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire

Britain is a country of the European Enlightenment, so I have thought, writes Will Hutton in last weeks newspaper. If only it was, we would not be descending into the mess of xenophobia and economic self-immolation that is the product and inevitable outcome of Brexit. But the Enlightenment was more at home in Scotland than it was in England.

In recent years, there has been a debate about the identity of the English, a debate that never produced a definitive answer.

The result of the referendum, however, has supplied one we are not Johnny Foreigner. For at least four centuries, the British, dominated by the English view of politicians, politics, society and the rest of the world, have been seen and understood through a prism of the dominant culture of a Great Britain. It is a culture of pomp, an unelected upper house, titles signifying social differences and a how we won the war media. There has never been a whole commitment to the European Union.

George Hudson Worcester

I agree with Will Hutton. David Cameron lacked judgment in holding the referendum, but also to blame for the result was the lack of Labour leadership in promoting a vigorous campaign to expose the distortions and lies the Tories were using to blame Europe for the policies they had instigated, which had damaged schools, hospitals, social services and housing needs.

Equally disastrous was the Labour leaders crass decision to take his MPs into the lobby to abandon the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act, which had been deliberately designed to prevent opportunist governments from taking advantage of electoral swings to benefit their own party. He could have stopped Theresa May in her tracks by opposing her and prevented her from gaining the 67% majority required to change the act. Instead, he not only faces the self-devastation of his own party, but, even worse, it gives the Tories untrammelled power to do as they wish for the next five years, uncontrolled by the slender overall majority the party currently enjoys.

Charles Tyrie Nottingham

Hasnt Will Hutton anything cheerful to say? Im depressing myself enough think about the political and economic state of the nation without him making me feel even worse. Cant the Observer start a pre-election section full of humour, something to let readers feel a momentary surge of happiness and, shall we say, enlightenment? Ian Hogg Witney

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The big issue: progressives are crying out for a new party - The Guardian