Your editorial (The Guardian view on Sir Keir Starmer: caught between scaring and inspiring voters, 5 January) is right to worry about Labour’s rejection of big-spending government. Labour is nothing if it does not defend adequate public spending, social justice and a fair reward for work. Its vision is limited because it shares the neoliberal assumption that growth comes only from the market. This reflects the massive growth of the industrial era, when millions were employed in the new factories, and their supporting services, such as private finance.
However, in the modern era, industrial production has been outsourced by the older market economies and replaced by the financial sector and hi-tech. But high levels of employment in these areas have not followed. In economies such as Britain’s, the main growth of mass employment has been in public and personal services, particularly health. It would seem logical, therefore, that public employment should be a focus of economic growth.
Neoliberal claims for the exclusive role of the market in creating wealth are mistaken. Both the market and the state generate wealth. This was understood by economists in the era of a mixed economy, before the ideologues of neoliberalism captured the political agenda.
Prof Mary Mellor
Newcastle upon Tyne
• As longstanding Labour members, we are horrified and profoundly dispirited by Keir Starmer’s speech, which totally misjudges the times we are in. Devolving powers to local communities without identifying substantial additional resources misses the point – people are desperate for tangible help with food, heat, mortgages, wages, social care, childcare, more reliable trains, a fully functioning NHS and properly resourced schools. Of course, this requires the big government spending that, astonishingly, Starmer denies.
Opinion polls consistently show that a majority of people understand and support the need for more public expenditure based on a fairer taxation system. If Labour cannot grasp the moment to argue for progressive measures – which have to include significant government intervention, to support public services and drive redistribution – we’re doomed.
Gideon and Marge Ben-Tovim
Liverpool
• Your leader following Keir Starmer’s new year speech states that “Labour has so far offered no decisive break with the philosophy of Rishi Sunak’s government”. As an avowedly democratic socialist party, it should be communicating an intent to govern not just with competence, but on principles that are the antithesis of the neoliberal ideology which has led to the present chaos, reversing years of upward redistribution of wealth, underinvestment in public services and use of public sector pay as an economic regulator.
From this should flow concrete, clear and memorable policies that people will recognise as having a direct and positive impact on their lives and wellbeing. To invoke undefined notions of “change” and “reform” is no help, for example, to those suffering directly from the NHS crisis. Labour should guarantee adequate and sustained resourcing of both health and social care provision. With the future of the NHS itself at stake and the risk that popular discontent with social and economic failure could take a rightwing turn, this is a fight to which Labour must show ideological commitment.
Dr Anthony Isaacs
London
