Letters to the Editor – week ending 5th October 2025

Read what people have been writing to our editor about this week. Find out how to share your own views here.

Conference highlights

The Pink Ladies attended Conference on behalf of the Royal Osteoporosis Society (Volunteer supporters of the ROS) and the Better Bones Campaign lobbying at a plethora of events and receptions for better services for Osteoporosis and a 100% roll out of Fracture Liaison Services, at present only in half the Trusts across England. Wes Streeting promised 100% by 2030, we’d love to see a Bone Plan for implementation by then! 

We had a fantastic time, several of us attending Conference for the first time. 

Julie Kaine

Volunteer Support for Burton-on-Trent group

*****

My highlight: Enver Solomon at the Refugee Council meeting – great clear statement ,stressing that asylum seekers are human and need to be treated with compassion,dignity and respect.

Why can’t our Labour leaders say something like that?

He suggested you need compassion as well as control but the government showed only control and little compassion.

The panel at the meeting agreed  ‘You can’t outFarage Farage’.

But sadly, the draconian anti-asylum policies continue.

Gideon Ben-Tovim

Liverpool 

Starmer’s Speech

Dear Editor,

Keir Starmer has improved his public speaking remarkably! But his conference speech still left me worried that the structural issues facing the country are not being dealt with – private financialinterests continue to have inordinate power to determine policy. ‘Renew’ can overcome Reform only by actually addressing fundamental issues of public good.

Housing and water are key areas where public good should be the determining factor. It’s outrageous that water companies are allowed to take enormous profits while pumping sewage into public water courses, something that could be stopped by controlling how the funds paid by the public for water are used. And similarly, the demand for housing is a need that should be addressed from a social perspective, not that of corporate profiteers.

David Margolies

London

*****

Whilst I am pleased that our PM has come out fighting against Reform I feel that unfortunately it is a battle Labour cannot actually win, but we have to stem the tide. Most Reform supporters are now I feel beyond reach. I am convinced it has nothing to do with poverty, living standards, prices etc.  It is just like Brexit, logical argument will not get through as so many no longer engage with information sources that are objective. 

It has also become commonplace  in society to portray oneself as an outsider, no matter how properous or influential. This facilitates the politics of grievance and identity and that ludicrous catch all phrase Change. Meaning what?

Labour has to tack to Green and Liberal voters to have a chance of keeping power. 

Trevor Hopper

Deputy leadership race

Powell seems well suited to help with what we all know the Labour Government needs most, better engagement with Party and country. That’s democracy, not division. 

Phillipson, on the other hand, aspires to expand what she controls though she’s not fully on top of the day job. She’s barely touched the most important shortcomings of education and the much vaunted food offerings aren’t full funded or nailed down. She already has plenty to be getting on with and there’s nothing to make you think she could bring the more nuanced messaging Government needs. 

Tim Putnam 

Labour International 

*****

I wasn’t at conference but made an attempt to log on for the Deputy hustings. It was an appalling experience. No link sent to Labour members and it was so well hidden on the party website that I couldn’t find any reference. A helpful ally in a campaign group managed to send me a link, by which time half the allotted hour had elapsed.

This is the opposite of the open democratic pluralism that Labour is supposed to value. Why is the organisation so poor?

Sue Lloyd 

*****

Dear Editor

Recent comments made by deputy leadership contender Lucy Powell MP regarding EHRC guidance on the Supreme Court judgement (FWS) at a conference fringe event are creating an atmosphere of fear for lesbians in the UK.

Lesbians have endured years of hostility and threats of violence for asserting our right to association based upon our same-sex attraction. April’s Supreme Court judgement clarified the meaning of sex to mean biological sex in the EA2010 and thereby clarifying sexual orientation and demonstrating that lesbians have been interpreting the law correctly with regard to lesbian association.

Yet comments suggesting the language used is “not right” perpetuates the climate of hostility for lesbians by casting doubt over the law and the desire of law-makers to uphold it. It validates those who seek to transgress our boundaries in creating lesbian-only spaces.

Lesbian Labour points out that this legislation is not new: it has been in place since 2010. It has merely been clarified by this year’s Supreme Court ruling.Some policy makers have called for a review of wording. This would entail revising the EA2010. This demonstrates the urgent need for clear guidance.

We call upon Lucy Powell to clarify precisely what she wishes to amend with respect to the EA2010. The implications for lesbians could be grave and, as suggested by the Supreme Court, render the characteristics of sex and sexual orientation, meaningless.

Sincerely 

The Lesbian Labour Collective

It’s Economics, Stupid

Hi Emma, 

This week I have been frustrated by Rachel Reeves and Sir Keir Starmer rejecting socialist economics while swallowing the ‘snake oil merchants” conventional policies which have been designed by rich capitalists and their lackeys over centuries to benefit – guess who? – rich people and their lackeys!

We have had some periods of relative enlightenment with Keynesian economics getting us out of the Great Depression and the National Debt incurred during the Second World War – building homes; the NHS; Pensions; Social Security; universal good free Comprehensive, Further and Higher Education including maintenance grants – and that public spending fuelled private sector growth. Haven’t we learnt that ‘austerity’ as a Government policy is a downward spiral?

When Government spends, the economy grows and the private sector benefits – we can see how much each individual benefits because their annual income and their overall wealth increases. taxing that income and wealth progressively gives you the money to invest in further government spending. Tax is not just about paying for public services, it’s about redistributing income so the low paid can spend it in the economy.

The ‘Depression’, and in 2008, the financial crisis were not caused by government debt, they were caused by excessive private sector debt and the failure of the private sector banking system to handle it – they had to be bailed out by more government borrowing.

Moderate inflation is not worse for low paid workers with car loans or with mortgages, (so long as their pay keeps up with it) than for wealthier people. Increasing interest rates as a policy to fight inflation gives more money to people with savings by taking it from those with debt, at the same time it makes businesses with debt pay more interest, increasing their prices and cutting hours or laying-off staff.

Hyperinflation should be avoided of course but that is, again, a failure or even a malign intention of the international capitalist financial sector.

Between 2009 and 2021 the Bank of England (BoE) first reduced interest rates to 0.25% to stimulate growth (no inflation) and when that didn’t work, gradually created, with a few computer keystrokes, £900Bn which they used to buy back Government Bonds (debt) so that the BoE owned a third of our total National Government Debt. 

The idea was that the commercial banks would use the money released to lend to private sector businesses to invest and grow, but instead the banks kept the money in the BoE reserves and the BoE started paying them interest on it. Result? The banks made money on the sale of Bonds to the BoE in fees and commissions and inflated prices and got new interest (reserves weren’t interest bearing before 2009) and the private sector still stagnated- no growth and no inflation. Inflation only kicked in with the combined effects of the Russia/Ukraine war, Covid lockdown/furlough bounce back and Brexit.

Reeves and Starmer should be talking to some socialist economists – Ann Pettifor, Steve Keen, Stephanie Kelton, Marianna Mazzucato and/or a host of other economists with a very different view of government debt.

I could go on but this is much longer than you asked for – trouble is so many people are put off by economics but it is so fundamental to the society we want and if you don’t open your mind to alternative views you are prey to the ‘snake oil merchants’.

Regards,

Colin Bryant

Local delivery?

Dear Editor

I am the Branch Chair in an unwinnable constituency, South Shropshire. 

I wrote on behalf of the Branch to Keir Starmer, David Lammy and Yvette Cooper about removing Palestine Action as a terrorist group, but got no reply or acknowledgment.

We are part of West Midlands Region and never have emails answered. The lack of national communications to combat Reform and the lack of engagement with the views of die hard supporters who door knock and campaign tirelessly has resulted in an exodus of members. 

Reform are picking up easy votes across the social spectrum because Labour national messaging is knee jerk and not at all engaging or inspiring.

Shanthi Flynn

Shropshire Hills Branch Chair

Thank you Luke

Dear Luke,

A quick thank you from a daily reader. 

In the past year or so I have come to rely on Labour List for its honest and fair-minded reporting of our shared politics. I feel so much more connected to our party and look forward to reading it every day.

I wish you lots of luck and joy in whatever you turn your hand to next.

Thanks again. 

Chris Hampson

East Hants.

[Note from the editor: And so say all of us!]

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