Letters | 1 March 2018

Corbyn and the zeitgeist

Sir: Your leading article is right about university tuition fees and the fruitlessness of Tory half-measures, name-calling and then unedifying policy-swapping (‘Corbyn’s useful idiots’, 24 February). But I believe the writing is on the wall for the wider involvement of ‘free markets’ in the public sector. We have seen growing public support for taking the railways and water companies back into public ownership as people justifiably ask what is in it for them under the current system.

In the NHS, as Max Pemberton makes clear (‘Wasting away’, 24 February), the internal market has been a wasteful disaster. We were told that costs would be driven down as standards went up. All too often the reverse has been the case. Only the corporate lawyers have benefited. It pains me, as a lifelong Tory, to admit it but Mr Corbyn is ideally placed. He exudes conviction and his is the zeitgeist as we move out of the post-Thatcher consensus in British politics. I sense one of those sea changes like the one James Callaghan saw before the 1979 election.
Dr Barry Moyse

North Petherton, Somerset

Inaction on the NHS

Sir: Our own work confirms the central NHS problem that Dr Pemberton describes. Everyone involved is all too aware of the waste and the frustration of medical staff. The Health Secretary has been in post for five years but is yet to address the issue. Why does he dismiss offers of help? Adversarial politicians have created the mess but refuse to let others resolve it. Proposals by Norman Lamb for a non-party ‘Convention’ and by Lord Saatchi for a Royal Commission are both constructive and practical. Yet they have been rejected out of hand without indication of any other way forward.