Re: An open letter to Keir Starmer by Paul Ryder.
Sir,
As a man with BPD and active in that community I used to say to the others “stay alive wait this government out, the next one is going to have had at least a decade to research what has gone wrong since 1979. And the punitive DWP who are harming so many of us, killing some, will surely be of concern to them.”
My reasoning wasn’t just wishful thinking in economics: the warnings made in 1978/79 about Nigel Lawson and Alan Greenspan are what we are living through now. A government with no assets and huge costs from sell and lease back policies, a housing market deformed by right to buy and buy to let, a lack of skills in the labour market due in part to the defenestration of the unions and the change from apprenticeship to train to the job, a government with a massively reduced tax base from cuts, deregulation, globalisation and offshore banking. A government hamstrung by an ageing population in need of more and more money to be spent. And a government having to effectively bribe large business to stay here and pay first world wages in part due to the lack of skills and the need to pay enough to buy housing
In my mind the incoming government would have had at least a decade to research this with an army of spads and think tanks. Instead they seem to have just cut and pasted a mishmash of Tory and New Labour policies to appease our tabloid press and with the overriding fear of spooking the markets.
One of their first acts was to adopt the Centre for Social Justice’s appalling propaganda against the sick and disabled. Listen to me when I tell you a job is not a clinical outcome for any illness. It could help if it was part of an encompassing scheme including social housing, proper care services and a requirement for employers to treat staff like they would have to with a union presence. But the CSJ edits that out from the studies they have the gall to cite.
The incoming Labour government should have had the basic professional gumption to use their time in opposition properly. They could have built an understanding of the cracks in our economy and how these cracks allow people like Nigel Farage and other populists to slime into view. Had I known they would not, I would probably have abstained. I certainly would never have embarrassed myself by suggesting to my fellow sufferers that Labour’s arrival was worth waiting for.
Gareth Evans
Cornwall
Gareth,
Thank you for your comments, I am grateful for them, and I sympathise considerably with your views. We have certainly had an awful lot to put up with from 14 years of Tory government, which let most people down in so many ways. So we voted for change, got it thank goodness, but the outcomes from Labour so far have not fulfilled our expectations as much as we had hoped. But Labour come from a much better place and understand much better than the Tories that their obligation in government is to serve the people, and for the moment we have to be content with that. I’m sure, once they’ve found their feet in government, they will improve.
Thanks again for your comments Gareth, and my very best wishes to you.
Paul
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