How on earth does Rachel Reeves imagine that the Tory years of mismanagement can be undone without some increase in taxation (Rachel Reeves rules out wealth tax if Labour wins next election, 27 August)? You also report this week that some councils are said to be near bankruptcy, while council services are shadows of their former selves, libraries are underfunded and branches closed, bus services are cut, and the NHS seems to be in its death throes. And Reeves doesn’t propose a wealth tax?
The shadow chancellor claims to want economic growth. Perhaps she can explain how that is possible when all the public services we depend on have been cut to the bone – indeed, to the marrow.
Tom Wilson
Professor emeritus, University of Sheffield
• Rachel Reeves, sounding uncomfortably like Liz Truss, wants to achieve prosperity by growing the economy rather than through taxation. While this promise might woo some Conservative voters, it is another change of heart to disappoint, if not anger, existing and potential Labour voters. Many of us wish to see a taxation system that is fairer and is used more explicitly to address the inequalities that arise from disparities in income and wealth.
Wealth taxes and a more progressive income tax would both contribute directly to this aim. They could also broaden the tax base to provide more revenue to be invested in public services, or alternatively they could fund tax reductions that would benefit the least well-off. Taxing differently does not have to mean taxing more.
Kim Loader
Whitby, North Yorkshire
• With the discarding of yet another one of Keir Starmer’s pledges, this time the promise to increase the 45p top rate of income tax, it’s clear that Labour’s election manifesto will contain nothing radical, or indeed anything likely to cause the slightest offence to Tory supporters.
With that in mind, it seems illogical that Labour is not arranging an informal electoral pact with the Liberal Democrats, starting with the byelection in Mid Bedfordshire.
Hopefully, Labour’s leadership team will have already realised that voting for a Labour party with no traditional Labour policies will be impossible for thousands of voters like me, making the need for an electoral pact more urgent. The gap between rich and poor will continue to increase, water companies will carry on ruining our environment, energy companies and supermarkets will still be ripping off customers, banks will still make massive unearned profits without fear of windfall taxes, our top universities and jobs will still be dominated by the privately educated, while the “forgotten third” will receive underfunded education, and our key workers will still not get the pay they deserve. Does Starmer not realise that this will reduce Labour’s vote significantly?
Bernie Evans
Liverpool
• Rachel Reeves deludes herself if she thinks that ruling out a wealth tax will demonstrate Labour’s economic competence to most voters, when clearly what most want is an increase in economic security.
Despite this, Labour, with its increasing emphasis on a Tory-lite programme of reducing the national debt and ditching its wealth tax promises, is rapidly moving away from the policies needed to provide such security. What is required is a massive increase in expenditure on social and green infrastructure, and on the wages and conditions of those working in these areas. This is the approach needed to meet voters’ desire for a rapid reduction in financial insecurity, and a hope-inducing social and green new deal.
Rachel Reeves must rethink Labour’s obsession with debt reduction and stop pandering to the rich, and instead explain how she is going to pay for the massive increase in public expenditure needed to provide what she has termed “securonomics” – a far more electorally astute goal.
Colin Hines
Convener, UK Green New Deal Group
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