Nesrine Malik (Labour dreams of a slightly better Britain, 27 February) is nostalgic for the relatively kind, decent society she encountered when she first came to the UK in the mid-2000s, and fears that after 13 years of Tory government, Keir Starmer’s promises are too timid to make things anything but slightly better.
What Malik doesn’t remember are the Thatcher/Major years, when public services, then as now, were systematically deprived of funding; when schools and hospitals were crumbling, and there were people sleeping rough on the streets. She doesn’t remember how desperate most people had become for a kinder, more decent society, or how Tony Blair, in opposition, had to woo Rupert Murdoch and Richard Branson in order to persuade swing voters that he was a safe pair of hands. Blair even promised that an incoming Labour government would stick to the Tories’ spending plans during its first few years in power.
