Nesrine Malik (Labour dreams of a slightly better Britain, 27 February) is nostalgic for the relatively kind, decent society she encountered when she first came to the UK in the mid-2000s, and fears that after 13 years of Tory government, Keir Starmer’s promises are too timid to make things anything but slightly better.
What Malik doesn’t remember are the Thatcher/Major years, when public services, then as now, were systematically deprived of funding; when schools and hospitals were crumbling, and there were people sleeping rough on the streets. She doesn’t remember how desperate most people had become for a kinder, more decent society, or how Tony Blair, in opposition, had to woo Rupert Murdoch and Richard Branson in order to persuade swing voters that he was a safe pair of hands. Blair even promised that an incoming Labour government would stick to the Tories’ spending plans during its first few years in power.
Yet once in office Labour made a massive difference, unfashionable though it may be to say so. Labour in office will always do far, far more for social justice and cohesion than the Conservatives.
Richard Watson
Cockermouth, Cumbria
• Nesrine Malik is right to be disappointed by what is on offer from the Labour party. The policy timidity is attributable to calculations of electoral prudence, but I think this misreads the mood of the electorate. There is a widespread sense of disillusionment with a status quo that has led to long-term wage stagnation, grotesque inequalities of income and wealth, and public services collapsing.
There is at present a real opportunity for Labour to be more radical in its policy proposals, which, carefully presented, would not scare people away but would give them hope. It is not enough for a progressive party in opposition at such a time of crisis to tack unimaginatively to what it thinks is the centre.
Labour needs a leadership that has the courage and authority to persuade people to support change, for which years of failure have made them ready. I fear, however, that once elected under Keir Starmer only because it is the “not Conservative” party, Labour will quickly become just another iteration of the same failures, with potentially dire consequences for our democracy – as forewarned by Jonathan Freedland (If Keir Starmer is to win an election, he has to restore faith in Britain’s politics, 25 February).
Stephen Smith
Glasgow
• I too fear that Labour under Keir Starmer is too timid. Without deep systemic changes, any constructive solutions put in place by a Starmer government can be swept away by later destructive Conservative governments.
It took just one term for David Cameron’s government to destroy the progress of the previous Labour government’s net zero policies.
I have not read anything that gives me confidence that Labour will solve the deep issues at the root of our housing crisis. My children, like many of their generation, face a difficult future and live at home because the cost of housing is out of their reach. A lasting solution to housing requires a hard look at the root causes, and the ambition to make real, robust changes.
It means tackling head-on the interests of the landed rich. Without it, change is at best fragile.
Pete Callaghan
Exminster, Devon
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