Labour not to blame for debt

ACCORDING to ‘DB’ (Feedback, July 10) the Labour government was responsible for UK debt because they spent “all the money”. The evidence? An anecdotal note simply stating ‘there is no money.’ No mention of any real economics.

No mention of a banking system, high on deregulation, that went partying on a greed and fraud-fuelled rampage.

No mention that the debt is due to these irresponsible institutions that required hundreds of billions to save their skins. The increase in debt around 2008 is not a sudden increase in welfare spending!

For DB the Conservatives are bailing ‘us’ out. Bailing ‘us’ out with austerity – which really means the poor bailing out the wealthy so they can continue the party.

DB also claims that the British Empire was the most “benign”. The British Empire wilfully imposed unnecessary famines on India resulting in the deaths of 29 million people.

In 1876 the Viceroy, Lord Lytton, insisted that nothing should prevent crop exports to England and officials were ordered to ‘discourage relief works in every way.’

As millions starved the military were used to ‘collect the tax arrears accumulated during the drought.’

With only one example of British rule there is a death toll almost five times that of the Jewish Holocaust. How on earth does DB define benign?

It’s said we get the politicians we deserve. With such blind patriotism, misinformation and myth so readily accepted by some, it is hardly surprising we have incompetent politicians like May and Johnson.

TONY BENNETT, via email