Letters to the Editor – week ending 02 August 2026

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

Letters to each other

Thank you Janie Grote. Tax is not a burden, it is a contribution. We all contribute and we all share the benefits. You cannot live on a ladder, housing is about a home to live in.

Genevieve Terry

*****

Back in Time?

Emma

I started work in the late 1970s, and I consider myself genuinely lucky to have had my teenage years in that era. On a modest salary, still living with my parents, I was out nearly every night — pubs, gigs, cinemas, mates’ houses — and it was affordable. Even now, with my mortgage long paid off, I couldn’t dream of doing that today.

And that isn’t nostalgia. Recent work by Piketty shows that the 1970s were the period when the wealth curve was closest — the gap between ordinary workers and the wealthy was narrower than at any point since. My lived experience matches the data: life was simply more affordable for ordinary people.

What gets lost in the folklore is that the economic turbulence of the 1970s wasn’t caused by unions or public ownership — it was caused by geopolitical shocks, just like today. The oil crisis didn’t originate in Britain, and neither did today’s energy‑price spikes, supply‑chain disruptions, or global inflation pressures. We keep blaming domestic institutions for global events.

That’s why the media’s obsession with a binary “1970s vs 1980s” is so misleading. Emma Burnell is right: most people invoking the Winter of Discontent didn’t live through it, and the stories have grown in the telling. The gravediggers’ strike lasted two weeks. The rubbish piled up for eight. Both were unpleasant, but neither defined the decade.

What did define the decade was a society where wages tracked productivity, public services functioned, and young people could build a life without being crushed by housing costs, privatised utilities, or financialised everything.

The real rupture came in the 1980s. Thatcher didn’t take Britain back — she took it somewhere entirely new: a more unequal, more fragile, more individualised economy. The “Big Bang”, the sell‑off of national assets, and the shift from industrial to financial capitalism created winners, yes — but also a long tail of insecurity that we still live with. The 2008 crash exposed the fragility of that model, and austerity reanimated it instead of replacing it.

So when Andy Burnham says Britain took a wrong turn in the 1980s, he’s not being nostalgic — he’s being accurate. Ending the Thatcher settlement isn’t about going backwards. It’s about finally going forwards.

We need the same level of ambition Thatcher had — but aimed at building a fairer, more resilient economy. One where wealth doesn’t pool at the top, where utilities invest instead of extract, and where young people can afford to live the kind of ordinary, joyful life many of us took for granted in the 1970s.

That isn’t regression. It’s progress.

Paul Hume
Bellingham Branch

*****

When looking at the sale of national assets under Thatcher, don’t forget North Sea oil. Norway is now one of the richest countries, thanks to its Sovereign wealth fund; in the UK the oil revenue was used to reduce taxes and pay for 3 million unemployed.  Now that revenue from the North Sea has almost dried up, it’s time to consider the reinstatement of the 60p top rate of tax. 

Phil Tate
Chester

Vocational Education and Social Care – your response to this week’s announcements

Great to hear that Andy Burnham has pledged to introduce work experience for all pupils and students. Work experience in England was established in the 1970s by Jack Pidcock, Principal Careers Officer of Manchester Careers Service. Manchester Education Committee authorised and the Careers Service organized two weeks work experience for all Year 10 pupils in Manchester Local Education Authority schools, including those with special educational needs. It was highly valued by pupils, teachers, inspectors, employers and eventually politicians, who legally extended it to all schools. In Manchester I was happy to support it and follow up pupils from my schools through all their transitions. Scandalously in 2012 Michael Gove and The Conservative Liberal coalition government abolished compulsory work experience for students in England at key stage 4 (Years 10 to 11 for 14-16 years olds).

Many non-governmental and employer-led bodies had become critical of pupils and students not understanding the ‘world of work’ and thankfully Milburn and Burnham have acknowledged the contribution it can make to young people’s insights and confidences.

I wonder what Andy’s work experience placement was?

Answers on a postcard please to Number 10 North.

All the best.

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

*****

Burnham needs to bring back the culture of the Polytechnics. Half a century ago they flexibly expanded HE and FE opportunity in a wide range of subjects relevant to local economic and social needs and potential. We were so good at that people began to come from abroad, especially other European countries; one of the objectives of turning the Polys into Universities was to better exploit that market. But taking these institutions away from local government and vesting them with boards of local businessmen was usually a backward step, narrowing the notion of labour market relevance and making subject development more shallow. That we can blame on Major’s Tories even if some Poly Directors lobbied to get away from local authority control.

So when Brown decided to massify HE entry to feed a ‘knowledge society’, the the base of engagement was already being hollowed out as well as eroded by a reducing unit of resource. Socio economic engagement was further undermined by empty emulation of ‘top Uni’ curricular features to satisfy status seekers. That was never likely to spark a more relevant relation between supply and demand in HE, but the idea of correcting it by some kind of future earnings valuation of degrees was always bound to destroy more cultural, social and economic potential than it protected, especially when presided over by governments who didn’t even want to loan money to fee paying students they weren’t sure of getting back.

The last thirty odd years of English HE policy have not served the country, its people or its businesses well. Be inspired more by what was was built before.

*****

I feel very strongly about Social Care reforms. I have personal experience in this matter. A Social Care Service needs setting up. It would be as big as the NHS (a separate department and needs it’s own Minister. Angela Rayner has a disabled son and is fully aware of whats needed) and it needs funding through general taxation. The opposition Parties will of course oppose this, but Andy Burnham can do this bygetting his MPs to vote for it (3 line wip) as Labour has the majorityin Parliment it will pass.

There will be a lot of political flack about this but it needs doing.

Peter Cockings

The EU, Minstream and Rehabilitation

Like all enthusiastic pro-Europeans, I was encouraged to read last week of Prime Minister Burnham’s “wish to see Britain rejoin the EU in his lifetime”, but I can suggest a route whereby that could be achieved within the lifetime of this Parliament.

According to the latest polling carried out nationwide, all but a small minority of British voters now believe that Britain’s narrow decision in the 2016 referendum to leave the EU was at best ill-informed and unfortunate and at worst disastrous. According to numerous opinion polls over recent months, it is estimated that if a new referendum was held in the near future, a move to rejoin the EU would be supported by some 65-70% of voters, giving a new REJOIN vote a margin of victory of 30-40%, somewhat more convincing and authoritative than the miserly 2% LEAVE margin in 2016.

Whether they are consumers, students, tourists, expats, business people, manufacturers, exporters or importers, people young or old are generally concluding that the 2016 decision and subsequent departure, was a terrible mistake, and that our future lies in much closer links with our European partners, including a return to the single market, a customs union, and free movement.

This view is moreover shared by Europeans in every EU nation, 66% of whom would support Britain rejoining the bloc.

And here is a strategy to pursue this objective. In only his first few days in office, Andy Burnham has already shown determination and resolve over several issues. If he were to announce a new EU referendum to take place in the next few months, the result would most likely be a decisive YES vote, and with a level of support that no future government, not even the nightmare of a Reform (or worse) administration, could dare to ignore. 

After all, Brexit was forced on us by the so-called ‘will of the people’, which even at only 2% and with no threshold or safety net, could seemingly not be ignored. How much more convincing and authoritative would a 30-40% margin be? 

Whilst such momentous decisions as nationwide referendums need to be respected, they cannot be expected to apply in perpetuity, and, as with our periodic General Elections, the ‘will of the people’ needs to be updated. After 10 years, now is clearly the time to do so.

Keir Starmer made some hesitant and nervous steps in the direction of closer ties with the EU, but was a long way from pledging to rejoin the EU. Now is the opportunity for Andy Burnham to make a positive policy declaration, for which his boldness and decisiveness would be greatly applauded by voters of nearly every political party, and for which the UK electorate and population would be eternally grateful.

Yours

Robin Spencer

*****

I have never heard of “Mainstream” despite being a life long Labour member. We already have far too many factional groups – the worse being the SCG yet here we have yet another one being set up to try and REDUCE factionalism. We have never been a Broad Church in fact and it is time we became a focused Church as John Smith tried to do by adopting social democratic policies = why he was so popular. We should do this because it is the only system that has been consistently found to work for the people. 

Keep Cool and Focus. 

Regards, 

Bernard Naish

*****

Prisons cannot become vengeance factories for victims and the relatives of victims seeking revenge against perpetrators. Whilst the hurt felt can never be underestimated, the victim’s role should end once the perpetrator has been tried and sentenced by the courts. It is then for the criminal justice system to ensure justice is achieved – that includes managing release and rehabilitation.

It has been widely accepted that incarcerating people does not cut crime. In fact, prisons are universities of crime equipping offenders to be better criminals on release. 

The only way prison can be a positive experience is if proper rehabilitation takes place, giving offenders and the public another chance. 

Rehabilitation, though, can only work in orderly run prisons, not overcrowded battery style facilities. The latter amount to powder kegs, hence the government’s desire to cut numbers in the present overcrowded system.

As a former chief inspector of prisons pointed out, all but a handful of prisoners will be released at some point and they could be living next door to you or I.

Media incited hysteria may sell papers but it does not solve the problems of the justice system. Out of sight out of mind is not a criminal justice policy. 

Society needs to face up to the challenges that offenders pose. Punishment, yes, but less incarceration and more rehabilitation should be the way forward.  

Failure to deal with the present system on the basis of logic, rather than the last headline, will see the powder keg that is the prison system explode, with riots and mayhem – surely no one wants that?

Paul Donovan
London

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