Many Labour supporters, including myself, have waited a decade and a half for Labour to return to government and bring about a sea change in the governance of the country. We are now beginning to wonder why we bothered. Labour in opposition promised to ensure that the public would see a significant improvement in essential public services and in their economic wellbeing, but there is a fundamental flaw and inherent dishonesty in this government pretending it can achieve this while adopting an economic policy clothed in a self-imposed straitjacket.
Rachel Reeves’s spring statement (Rachel Reeves accused of balancing books on back of UK’s poorest, 26 March) further exacerbates the chasm between her party’s ambitions in opposition and its achievements in government. A year ago, Frances Ryan asked: What’s the point of Starmer’s Labour if it won’t stand up for poor, sick or disabled people? That is just one of the questions that many of us are beginning to ask.
Peter Riddle
Wirksworth, Derbyshire
• “Welfare savings from withdrawing or cutting incapacity benefits”; “Thousands of public sector jobs to go”; “Government departments facing major cuts to their budgets”. Sound familiar? Headlines from George Osborne’s spending review in 2010. That went really well, didn’t it? Good job Labour has learned lessons from that. Still, at least it saved money by copying and pasting from it.
Peter Loschi
Oldham, Greater Manchester
• So all disabled people who want to work will be supported in obtaining secure and well-paid jobs as part of Labour’s drive to reduce welfare costs and get Britain working. I recall a previous Labour government targeting disabled people by withdrawing financial support to some Remploy factories under the guise of helping those people affected to secure work in open employment. As feared at the time by disability groups, the reality was that the scheme was really about reducing welfare costs.
The majority of people who lost their job at a Remploy factory faced long-term unemployment and loss of independence and self-worth. History will repeat itself with this Labour government’s shameless attack on disabled people.
John Maher
Liverpool
• I am sickened that a Labour chancellor, confronted with an unfavourable financial forecast, thinks the only course of action is to expect the poorest in society to have their income reduced to fill the gap. Our system is awash with tax breaks for the better-off. Rachel Reeves is behaving exactly as I would expect a Tory chancellor to, which is not what I, or the rest of those who voted Labour, wanted out of a new government.
John Rennie
Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire
• Like Jon Burnell (Letters, 25 March), I too am appalled by this Labour government. As a member since 1960, I see a party that is led by a former human rights lawyer who cannot tolerate dissent, that echoes the cruelty of the last Conservative government, and that implements economic policies which seek to penalise the most needy and vulnerable. I have started to ask myself when does loyalty become an endorsement of the unacceptable? I am going to find it very difficult to renew my membership next year.
George Redman
New Eltham, London
• Do you think Keir Starmer, Rachel Reeves and the rest of this welfare-cutting cabinet can wash the lower halves of their bodies themselves? I just cannot believe that it is a Labour government that is targeting disabled people in such a shameful way. We would have been a better society under another Rishi Sunak government – and I have been a Labour voter all my long life. I can’t vote Labour now, not while this lot are in power.
Pat Staples
Southampton
• I have been a Labour supporter all my life, but I am appalled by the spring statement. I know that Rachel Reeves loves savings, so I have today resigned my Labour membership and will be donating the money saved to Save the Children instead.
Nick Rozanski
London
• If that’s not austerity, I’m a spring onion!
Jol Miskin
Sheffield
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