Profligate spending only stores up trouble

SIR – The Conservatives cannot increase their standing with the electorate by offering bribes. Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party will always outbid them on that.

It is necessary to convince voters, especially the younger ones, that profligacy now, funded by increased borrowing, can only lead to financial disaster for future generations. Leonard Macauley

Staining, Lancashire

SIR – It is ridiculous for Mr Corbyn to refer to the austerity programme as “brutal”. It is nothing of the sort, and the use of the word “austerity” is totally inappropriate.

Having grown up in the bombedout ruins of east London in the post-war years, I think I have a reasonable idea of what being brutally poor is like. The current levels of welfare spending keep most people well away from those levels of poverty.

The only way forward is to keep trying to reduce the deficit; until we do, the future will be bleak. Jam today and payment tomorrow might be Mr Corbyn’s only hope for glory, but it is an empty, selfish kind of politics that will lead the nation nowhere. Mick Ferrie

Mawnan Smith, Cornwall

SIR – Very few people I talk to understand that the national debt is climbing past £1.7 trillion. Our debt-to-GDP ratio, which even fewer people understand, is the 19th highest in the world.

Our deficit is forecast to reach £68 billion this year; and, while it is right for the Government to keep harping on about getting the deficit down, it should spend more time explaining why, in terms that people can understand. Colonel David O’Gorman (retd)

Hindhead, Surrey