Letters to the Editor – week ending 31 May 2026

Defence discussion continues

Dear Emma,

Thank you for writing this important piece. Would it be preposterous of me to disagree with Costello?

The song juxtaposes the tangible economic impact of defence shipbuilding with the human cost of war. When we talk about our current situation, we often use a similar framing: Russia is an immediate threat, so we are forced to invest in defence. In both cases, defence spending is a regrettable trade-off. I think there is a moral case for defence spending that goes beyond necessity and the economic case.

There are two long-standing traditions on the left. One is primarily reflective and self-critical. This is necessary, but can lead to isolationism out of fear of repeating past mistakes. The Iraq War has cast a long shadow, rightly deepened our caution, and strengthened this tradition.

But that’s not the only tradition. From Spanish Civil War volunteers to Bevin’s push for NATO, there is no shortage of examples of the left reaching beyond our borders out of solidarity and internationalism. George Orwell went to Spain and risked his life even though he could have stopped at condemning fascists in print.

Both traditions matter. It’s asking “is it worth it?” that stops us from mindless aggression and makes us fear what we could cause. And without the burning sense of obligation to help in a tangible way, we’d be forced to equivocate on the moral case for helping Ukrainians defend themselves from Russian aggression, as some do now.

It’s easy to agree that self-defence is a practical necessity, a prerequisite to any political debate. There is little political debate in the Donbas today if one wants to avoid being tortured or disappeared. But the tradition of solidarity suggests a wider moral case for being able to deter aggression and stand up for our allies. This moral case is more obvious in Britain than almost anywhere else in Western Europe: we’re unusually united across the political spectrum in supporting Ukraine. We shouldn’t be afraid to say it out loud.

Accepting defence spending as a moral compromise is dangerous even on its own terms. We are on the western edge of Europe, far from Russia, so an isolationist argument can make practical sense and let a future negligent government claim the moral high ground of restraint. But abandoning allies, allowing genocides to continue, and failing to deter war are immoral.

In today’s Britain, defence spending is not just necessary, but moral.

Yours,

Dan Groshev

It’s complicated…

I want to say how well thought out and clear Emma’s editorial is this morning. 

The truth is that in the past, politics was considered to be boring and complicated. Modern media and especially social media have gone out of their way, not to make it accessible so much as to make it entertaining and emotive. The truth is complex and people in reality are complicated and as you say, we all have contradictions. In an entertaining pantomime, the goodies are perfect and the villain(s) always one dimensional – all bad. Hooray for Cinderella and Boo Hiss to the ugly sisters. There is something very appealing about getting your emotions out in the safe environment of ‘pure good versus pure evil’ and the knowledge that the pure bad is going to be defeated and all will turn out well.

Under the auspices of making politics engaging to the ordinary voter (or more likely to boost readership and audiences) giving air time to the likes of Trump and Farage made people angry (in different ways). And it worked. Of course those media outlets, the newspapers, started off life as political leaflets. They have never stopped being that, hence the level of bias.

What seems to me to be the problem is that complications have been over simplified and we are in pantomime mode. Of course, the goodies and baddies in pantomime are both polar opposites of each other as well as stereotypes. At the moment politics is more polarised than ever. In the USA, you either accept Trump as some kind of Massiah character or you are a dangerous liberal/communist that is a traitor to your country. Moreover, you are to be ridiculed and attacked as a threat to everything about your country. The Republican Party now totally goes along with Trump, or its members are out and their careers ruined.

Here in the UK, we seem to be heading in the same direction. So many people I meet hate our government because it is “evil and never done anything positive” and is totally incompetent etc. This is the mentality that says that Angela Rayner is totally corrupt and evil over her tax misstep, but so what if Nigal Farage has illegally got £5 million, “well he is a character and he is the only one who is different from the rest” who of course are “all the same”. Showing actual evidence of the truth and all of the things that the government has done, simply makes these people more angry with you for not accepting their cult. It is a pantomime, except that so much is fueled by hate, and the answer to anything is an extreme overreaction and another notching up of the narrative. Of course, really angry people don’t think and aren’t interested in real conversation, because they only trust those of the same persuasion.

So you don’t want to see sewage in the rivers and on our beaches – then you are “woke”; if you care about anything to do with the environment – you are “woke”. You can point out the failures of Brexit, then you are “woke”, “unpatriotic” and a “snowflake”. “Human rights hold us back”, “we should cut sick people’s benefits” and so on. Most of this would have been completely unacceptable to the public only a decade or so ago and shunned as being extreme. Today, outrages like these have been normalised.

Before the Brexit debate, I remember that there were factions in the Tory Party. Michael Heseltine was one of many pro European Tories, there was some consensus about the need to protect the environment and even in Thatcher’s days there were “Wets” and “Drys” in the cabinet. Then there was the Tory far Right. Now only the latter seem to survive. I mention this because it is all part of the polarisation of modern politics. And Johnson did more than almost anyone to ramp up the rhetoric.

So where we are now seems to me to be about labels and this is made even worse by the internet and social media that simply provide echo chambers for like-minded people who identify under the same label, where they construct their own “truth”. Like a pseudo-religious cult, they can accept only that which is stated by their own trusted source (the cult leader).

In the end, many different factions of opinion is actually a good thing, but only when we are in discussion with each other and that means being prepared to listen to each other and to accept facts. So yes, it is complicated and as human beings we are not divided into pantomime heroes and villains. We need to get back to the days when people look at political parties and say things like, I like the policy of party x on this, but not that and I think that party y is wrong about this but has a real point about that.

Talking to each other with respect isn’t a branch of the entertainment industry, but it is essential if we want a democracy. And finally, whenever anyone ends their argument with the phrase “it’s not rocket science”, be sure that they have oversimplified and don’t have a full understanding.

Best wishes

Jeremy Preece
(Labour Town Councillor at St Austell Town Council).

Milburn Review

Hi

When I started work as an engineer, I left school at 16 and straight away, started an Apprenticeship and spent the first year on a E.I.T.B course. This was subsidised by the Government. 

I spent all my working life in engineering one way or another. The help I received then set me up for life. This approach needs to be taken up again.

When I was 16 there was no such thing as unemployment and 1% went to University, it’s about 50% now. So young people’s expectations are much higher. Working with your hands is deemed to be dirty and young people are taught to go on the academic route.

Having worked on the Continent in the past their outlook for people is different with a different approach to people who work with their hands. 

I hope this is helpful. 

Peter Cockings

*****

Good afternoon

I just read in the Milburn Review: 

Careers guidance, work experience and employer engagement

‘Only 32% of young people reported receiving face-to-face careers advice in 2025.’

‘Lack of work experience is the single most-cited barrier to work amongst young people’

‘The problem is not that no one knows what works, but that what works is not happening at scale, and is least available where it is most needed.’

A lot of us do know what works, but although highly valued by young people, education and employers, various Governments messed with and destroyed the local authority careers services. The Tories left young people to market forces and computerised information with no guidance. Gove abolished work experience. 

The NEETS problem shows we lost real contact with young people.

In the 1970s and 1980s careers services provided comprehensive careers guidance, organised work experience for all year 10 pupils, (established by my ex-boss Jack Pidcock in Manchester) provided a personal vital link between school, college and work, and supported all young people which included home, work experience, college and employer visits throughout their transitions.

This Government should re-establish some local authority impartial careers educational and guidance services and full work experience pilot schemes in representative areas.

Best wishes

John Campbell
Political Education Officer
Uxbridge and South Ruislip C.L.P.

*****
Hello Emma,

Had Tony Blair’s ‘radical centrism’  given him the courage to accept the Tomlinson Report on the School curriculum he would have done something to give young people an education which met their needs rather than the academic exam factory which now prepares them so badly for the challenges they face.

David Parker

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