Letters to the Editor – week ending 25th October 2026

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

2008 – You made contact

Dear Emma,

Brilliant piece!

Quite right on New Labour – but like superb Surestart a great deal was all too easily swept away.

The arrogance and economically illiterate quote: ”We have eliminated boom and bust” – a monumentally foolish statement which would have had Keynes rotating in his grave, said a lot.

Brown did much to take the sting out of Thatcherism but continued the flogging off and outsourcing of the state on steroids. Most of British Rail was sold off or franchised under him, while the least said about PPP and the tube the better. Carillon?

As for tax, v clever juggling but made the British tax code an open house for avoidance and created a lot of v rich tax lawyers.

He did  better with an already ill-balanced economy but after 2010, we got even more ideologically driven economic vandalism. No, Keynes was right, Friedman not.

The cost of this political and economic failure to grasp the nettle is why, incredibly, somehow the IFS is now seen as impartial as Thatcher’s woeful concept that the nation’s finances are the same as a household budget still persists.

They are actually partisan devotees of Sir Keith Joseph.

A balanced economy, not simply printing money but investing in infrastructure, training and skills actually was the sensible economic policy all along.

It’s time the economic hangover ended. Hayek has a lot to blame for.

Niall Devitt

*****

I thought Emma Burnell’s piece today was brilliant. Absolutely my thinking too.

Thank you.

Peta Lunberg

All Apologies

I don’t think any of these responses amounted to a good apology. Turner’s came closest; Reform’s wasn’t really an apology at all.

I also disagree with the suggestion that a good apology shows everyone that ‘the matter is now settled’. The person apologising cannot decide that. A good apology makes clear what they accept responsibility for and what they will do about it. Those affected decide whether that is enough

Neil Millan

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