Cash support is thanks to capitalism

With the greatest of respect to Cllr Teresa Murray (letters, April 30) she doesn’t seem to understand what is happening to our economy as a result of the virus pandemic. It is not, as she implies, that it has taken the unexpected appearance of a health crisis to show us the wickedness of free market capitalism and led the government to the path of righteousness in nationalising the railways, subsidising wages, putting up the homeless in hotels, etc.

What is actually happening here is that, all but the essential parts of our economy, have been deliberately closed down by government decree in order to save lives in an almost completely unprecedented situation. It is only right that the government should take responsibility for keeping the economy on life support until the danger has passed. Mercifully, our economy was in good shape before the virus hit and we are better placed than most countries to afford the extraordinary additional public expenditure now called for.

That is not an indictment of free market capitalism so much as a vindication of it.

The keenness of governments worldwide to lift the current restrictions and get their economies back to work proves, if proof were needed, that the enormous costs of providing public services, the hospitals, the schools, the welfare benefits, etc, can only be met by the payment of taxes by those who create wealth by working or investing in a thriving capitalist economy.

Labour councillor Murray should not seek to portray the response to this crisis as somehow heralding the new dawn of a socialist utopian society any more than she should suggest that Britain would be better off inside Europe at a time like this. Europe’s community spirit, when the chips are down, was well illustrated by its rebuff of Italy’s pleas for help with medical equipment.

Antony Ward