John Harris rightly warns that by trying to demonstrate that Labour has ditched its Corbynite mantle and now wears the smart suit of economic prudence and financial restraint, Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves risk achieving just one term in government (Thinking small may get Labour into No 10. It could also stop it staying there, 28 January). By voting for a Labour government, people will be trusting it to tackle their most pressing concerns, such as rising hospital waiting lists, crumbling schools, squalid housing, inability to access social care, and the struggle to cover the cost of even the basic requirements of daily living.
The electorate will expect perceptible improvements in these essential services within Labour’s first term in office. The trust that Starmer and Reeves seek is fragile and must be reciprocated. Therefore, in return, Starmer must trust the public and have the courage to be honest with them that in order to meet their expectations there needs to be a significant increase in the level of government spending and a fundamental reform of taxation so that those with the most contribute the most. Starmer knows this, the Labour party knows this, and the public know this. Failure to articulate this will inevitably lead to the trust that voters placed in Labour quickly evaporating.
Peter Riddle
Wirksworth, Derbyshire
• John Harris writes that Rachel Reeves is drifting into a “tight-fisted kind of supply-side economics” which means “that the key to solving the housing crisis is a mere relaxation of planning laws”.
The housing crisis isn’t a problem of supply. It’s the domination of housebuilding by commodity production, itself dominated by an oligopoly (the big builders), the huge loss of council homes as a result of the right-to-buy policy, and the abandonment of council housebuilding as a priority. Changing planning rules will not push the oligopoly into building for social need. They build at a scale and pace which maximises their profit.
The key to resolving this lies in making social rent council housing the first housing priority, supported by central government grants. The more than 100,000 households in temporary accommodation and 1.2 million on waiting lists are not about to get mortgages.
As the experience of the Attlee government shows, when you do what is necessary, you can find the means of paying for it. Just imagine if “getting the debt down” had been applied in 1945. We wouldn’t have been able to afford to build 1m council homes, not to mention launching the NHS. The debt to GDP ratio then was 250% compared with 100% today. I wonder what Aneurin Bevan would have said to that.
Martin Wicks
Secretary, Labour Campaign for Council Housing
• I doubt if John Harris is right to critique the Keir Starmer project as a politics characterised by smallness. Surely what the public wants is a politics where everything is dialled down a notch or two, and Starmer’s steadiness might be excellent for this. A good Labour majority, achieved on a modest agenda, would tone things down. In actual power, Labour would have the advantage of slaying the bogeys of the right, better controlling the wider debate, and starting to diffuse the hysteria that creates paralysis. The electorate is fearful, not least because of world events. A progressive politics requires a less fearful, more reasoned atmosphere, in which people may eventually be able to venture more generous policies.
Dr Stefan Hawlin
Oxford
• John Harris rightly mentions the “barrage of hostility” Labour will face in government from a “coalition of forces”, ranging from the Telegraph to GB News, but doesn’t say how the real “barrage” will start before the election, and will be just as virulent and malicious regardless of the policies in the manifesto. Labour’s “green investment plan”, for instance, will be exaggerated and misinterpreted by the rightwing media, and viewed as unaffordable, if it lasts till then, and Keir Starmer will be accused of lacking consistency and principle if he makes another U-turn and drops it. “Political smallness” is cowardly, but also mistaken as it inevitably leads to the Tories yet again dictating the narrative.
We know that the richest 1% in the UK own 36.5% of all financial assets, with a value of £1.8tn, and that most of the CEOs of the top companies earn in excess of a hundred times the amount earned by their average employee. We know too, how economic theories such as Laffer’s curve and trickle-down economics have been debunked by modern economists, and how even during the majority of Margaret Thatcher’s premiership, the top rate of income tax was 15% higher than today’s rate, and that it was deemed unfair by her long-serving chancellor, Nigel Lawson, for unearned income to be taxed at a lower rate than earned income.
Going on to the front foot and promising to tackle any of these injustices will be popular electorally, and better than meekly reacting to government decisions. Rather than waiting for Jeremy Hunt’s budget, which will inevitably spend the Treasury’s “£20bn windfall” on tax bribes, Labour should publish its own alternative finance bill, spending the money on any of Larry Elliott’s excellent suggestions, or on providing decent pay for junior doctors, nurses and teachers, and those working in the care sector. With the economic multipliers quickly kicking in, the latter would be far cheaper than Tories admit, and prevent the current exodus of key workers continuing. Do voters really prefer having the cost of an extra pint a week to the provision of decent public services for years to come?
Bernie Evans
Liverpool
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