Decline and brawl
Sir: Gus Carter’s insightful portrayal of ‘Scuzz Nation’ (‘Streets of shame’, 10 May) is less of a howl of anguish about Starmer’s Britain than an indictment of previous governments of all stripes since the late 1970s. It is also, to me, a call for more sophisticated thinking about the nature of governance in the 21st century.
Carter shows, using lots of telling examples that we all recognise, that neither the state in its current form nor the private sector can cope with the multiplicity of challenges posed by a modern society. Of the state’s impotence, the current government is not the principal offender. To illustrate my point, just listen to a week’s worth of the Today programme and all the requests for extra funding that are heard every day. Politics is about choices; but no government can hope to get the balance right between so many competing demands.
In Carter’s conclusion that the nation is suffering from ‘the worst of market capitalism’ and an ‘ever growing, ever more useless state’, it is clear that new ways forward are required. We have arguably reached the point where lives are nasty and brutish with Leviathan, so who is bold enough to renew the Hobbesian vision for the 21st century? And no, sorry to disappoint, the answer is not Reform.
Andrew Mitchell
Bourne, Lincolnshire
Ghost town
Sir: Gus Carter gave a perfect description of many towns in his article. For many years, although being a ‘child of the Industrial Revolution’, Rotherham was a decent working-class town with a variety of shops and services. It is now a ghostly shadow of its former self and the town centre is not a place to linger at any time.
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