Did I detect a note of desperation in Martin Kettle’s piece (Starmer’s Labour knows the kind of Britain it wants – it just doesn’t know how to build it, 11 December)? The state and capitalist system that Labour and other governments have tried to manage for the last few decades is probably beyond the conventional reforms that benefited governments and their populations in the boom years after the second world war.
Now the voracious corporations that call the tune and expect Labour and others to dance are firmly in control. Witness the shameless manoeuvrings towards Blackstone et al, the Saudis and other sovereign wealth funds from Gulf states.
Are these the people who we expect to fix our school and NHS buildings, repair degraded roads, update a creaking transport system, make good our health and social care service, and house the thousands languishing in unsuitable accommodation? It is only a government that can be tough enough and willing to harness resources through a tax system, ensuring those with millions and billions pay a major proportion of the money required to guarantee that the state sector can deliver.
Years ago, another chancellor of the exchequer, one Denis Healey, is reported to have wanted to “squeeze the rich until the pips squeak”. It never happened then, and I suspect it will not happen now – leaving the population disillusioned, frustrated, angry and open to the toxic blandishments of Reform UK.
John Newman
Golcar, West Yorkshire
• I hope Martin Kettle is correct in believing that Keir Starmer has a vision for Britain, but his five-year targets don’t clarify it for me. Surely a vision for Britain needs to paint a picture of what kind of country and society Starmer wants to build. Is it to be a confident and compassionate country that sets itself high standards, or is it simply to aspire to being a distant US satellite? Short-term targets are not going to motivate in the way that a grand vision can.
So let’s see the vision for Britain in 2040, which progressive elements of all the other parties can sign up to. Intermediate targets should be mapped on to this vision. To date, Labour seems obsessed with avoiding criticism from the Daily Mail, but failing dismally in this respect. Although Britain is no longer a major power, we could still aspire to taking the moral high ground and setting a positive example to other countries.
John Harradence
Colwall Green, Herefordshire
• Martin Kettle suggests Keir Starmer has a vision for Britain, but I for one struggle to see it. From ditching the winter fuel allowance to attacking civil servants and bringing in corporate capitalist executives to examine departmental spending plans, the entire narrative has been negative.
Starmer is right in his analysis that Britain is broken, but then fails to address the underlying causes, one of which is an enormous gap between a very wealthy elite getting ever more wealthy, a further minority who are comfortable and a large majority living in poverty or just getting by.
Here are two reforms that might shift the narrative and change people’s lives: first, rejoin the European single market and free movement to enable the growth that Starmer and Rachel Reeves harp on about; and second, tax wealth to enable real investment in the public sector. Then a genuine vision would have emerged.
Jol Miskin
Sheffield
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