Putting the con into Conservative

THERESA May’s claim that Labour has betrayed the values that our parents held close would be laughable if it wasn’t so divisive.

She has chosen to use the same politics of fear that have been used for the last seven years of their term in government. Fear of foreigners, fear of the EU, fear of experts, even fear of their own Treasury!

But we are too canny to be conned in the north. My parents fought the Nazis, my dad as a miner and my mother as a nurse.

Their values were shaped by two world wars and a capitalistdriven depression.

They believed in quality healthcare free at the point of need; they believed in good education for all our kids regardless of the depth of their parents’ pockets.

They believed in treating workers with dignity and fairness; they believed that the strong should support the weak, they believed that homelessness was a scourge, that unemployment was an evil and that war was a failure of the powerful paid for with the blood of the powerless.

And it is for those reasons that they would be delighted with the policy platform put forward by Labour at this election.

Theresa May is trying to make this a personality contest when it should be a battle of values. She wants to frighten people into voting for her because, in reality, she, as the personification of the Establishment, is herself in fear of a Labour victory that is based on values that go back to us being a civilised, caring and inclusive nation. She, rightly, fears the fact that Labour is saying it doesn’t have to be this way, we can make a difference and that the world can be run differently.

She wants us to put faith in the Thatcher doctrine of TINA (there is no alternative) and she is prepared to spit on the values that our parents passed down to us in our part of the world.

She is putting the Con back into Conservative even if she is ashamed to use its very name. We will not be fooled. DAVE ANDERSON

Birtley