George Monbiot’s article (Rightwing thinktanks run this government. But first, they had to capture the BBC, 5 October) alerts readers to the dangers for us all in a prime minister parachuted into power by forces not commonly recognised or understood by the man on the Clapham omnibus. Their capture of the BBC command structure means the anodyne-sounding “supply-side reforms” that these groups advocate are rarely unmasked in terms that the average voter can relate to: more sewage on the beach, more likelihood of another Grenfell Tower disaster, and so on.
What the opposition needs to emphasise is the American origin of Liz Truss’s ideology as well as much of the funding behind its propagation. Herein lies its weakness as well as its strength: the Manchurian candidate may have landed, but the doctrine doesn’t actually travel.
As the recent U-turn amply demonstrated, the UK doesn’t have the economy, or the pound the dollar’s resilience, to run the sort of deficit that enabled Ronald Reagan to cut taxes at the start of this experiment. Nor are our national parks, adjacent to the proposed new “freeports”, that big by US standards – you cannot exploit, exhaust, move on and still pretend, even to Tory voters, that deregulation is somehow sustainable.
The Greenpeace protesters who so admirably interrupted Truss’s speech last week summed it up most succinctly: “Who voted for this?”
Paul Clarke
Horsham, West Sussex
• George Monbiot is absolutely right to draw attention to the roles of the Institute of Economic Affairs, the Taxpayers’ Alliance and others in influencing the media, including the BBC. Some time ago, I was invited on to BBC Radio 4 to discuss tax and found myself up against a representative from the IEA, who basically opposed the whole idea of taxation. When, after the programme, I queried who someone like him represented, and who was funding them, I was told the BBC sought to provide a platform for all shades of opinion. I have not been invited back since.
Rev David Haslam
Former chair, Church Action for Tax Justice
• George Monbiot is spot-on. It’s the same here in the US with National Public Radio. The only remedy to this is for the BBC, NPR and all public broadcasters to deny time and space to any organisation that refuses to disclose who its financial benefactors are. Failing that, describing them as “secret organisations that won’t disclose their financial sources” should suffice to tell viewers and listeners that their opinions can’t be trusted.
Of course, it won’t happen. Liberals are reluctant to engage in the same aggressive fashion as conservatives. It’s why liberals are losing and will continue to do so, as they seem to have for the entirety of my nearly 70-year-old life.
John Figliozzi
Clifton Park, New York, US
• Surely, for economic questions, the go-to organisation for the BBC and other media should be the Royal Economic Society (RES), which has members who are practising economists in all walks of life, so that it is representative of economic thought. But it is always out-shouted by these thinktanks, which have corporate money.
The RES depends on its members, but it must find a way to compete with the moneybags. It needs to raise its game. The success of democracy is at stake. It’s as important as that.
Martin Kerridge
Hove, East Sussex
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