Before launching attacks on Polly Toynbee’s rational defence of Keir Starmer’s “hyper-caution” (Listen up, critics: first let Labour win power. Then scrutinise its real record, 17 July), critics should recognise a brutal but inescapable reality: if what we say about the Tory destruction of economic vitality, crucial public services and social justice is true – and it implacably is – we cannot say that we will rapidly reverse the dereliction and expect to be believed.
Making such a promise might bring a spasm of hope to those of us who yearn for a Labour party victory. But it would not have any honest meaning, especially for those who most need the security of protection and of enablement.
Repair and renewal will only come when Labour has the tools to make the changes. The precondition of that is democratic power. It must be used with determined rigour.
The fact that such resilience is being proved in opposition increases my certainty that it will be mandated and applied in government. That’s hope I can believe in.
Neil Kinnock
Labour, House of Lords
• In her opinion piece justifying Keir Starmer’s decision to stick with the two-child benefit cap , Polly Toynbee claims the shadow cabinet should be trusted because, if the party wins the next election, people on benefits “will end up far better off, because that’s what Labour does”. She adds that Labour in power would do, “as New Labour did, far more than they dare promise”.
In fact, New Labour’s record on equality and lifting people out of poverty was far from satisfactory. After 12 years in government, the Guardian’s economics editor, Larry Elliott, said its legacy was “inequality at levels not seen under Macmillan, Heath, Thatcher or Major. Real cuts in the incomes for those at the bottom of the pile. No progress in reducing child or pensioner poverty. A record number of working-age adults without children living below the breadline” (Labour’s poverty of progress laid bare, 7 May 2009).
He added that “Labour inherited one of the west’s most unequal societies from the Conservatives in 1997 and, far from reversing the trend, it has allowed the gulf between rich and poor to widen.”
Paul Gravett
Huddersfield, West Yorkshire
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