Can any party solve the debt crisis?

IT’S TIME to end the myth of Tory economic competence. Gordon Brown saved the banks and saved the country from meltdown with taxpayers’ money. Along comes George Osborne, promising to wipe out to the deficit in one term — and getting nowhere close to doing so. Since the banks haven’t paid a penny back to the taxpayer, you can add more than £60 billion to the deficit, which puts it higher than when Osborne took over the Treasury. Cameron now has the cheek to call his party ‘the party of the working people’. Add the billions of the quantitative easing — Government forgery, I call it — cheap oil, cheap labour (zero hours contracts) and an unpaid IOU to the taxpayer, and Osborne’s growth is a mirage. The debt under Brown was £890 billion; under Osborne it’s £1.5 trillion. If this is success, I wouldn’t want to see failure.

E. R. THWAITE, cockermouth, cumbria. the Bill Clinton mantra: ‘It’s the economy, stupid’ is a cliche for success at the polls these days, but does it apply in 2015? You wouldn’t think so from the opposition parties now vying to tear David Cameron’s credibility apart. the Prime Minister’s success with the economy is ignored by ed Miliband, the SNP, the Greens and Welsh Nationalists. their feast of goodies, with hardly a mention of specifics, would be finalised by getting rid of that tory demon, austerity. our economic situation is still fragile. the Coalition has reduced the deficit but until that deficit is completely eliminated the national debt will keep growing: it’s a monumental task. Not only is public debt too high, but personal debt (£1.4 billion) is still a drag on the economy. the Labour leader’s lack of focus on either deficit or debt reminds me of Groucho Marx’s observation on the legacy of debt: ‘Why should we worry about future generations, what have future generations ever done for us?’

GORDON LAWRENCE, Sheffield.