Letters: Tony Blair, poverty and inequality

Jonathan Freedland says Tony Blair “would say you can only address [poverty and inequality] once the economy is firing. Maybe” (Tony Blair says he is all about the future – but his vision is woefully stuck in the past, 29 May). In fact poverty and inequality are the reasons the economy is misfiring. In the big economic crashes of history, gross inequality has been present. After 47 years, you would think that the obsession with supply-side economics might have been rumbled, but no: acres of newsprint are expended on the idea that incentivised businessmen alone can reboot the economy. There can be no animal spirits if there is no market to buy the goods. And things like people having to spend as much as 40% of their weekly salary on rent explains why there is no market, at least not without people having to get into dangerous and silly amounts of debt. When in office, Blair and Gordon Brown did nothing to ameliorate the speculative, unequal weaknesses of Thatcherism – indeed, they sometimes made it worse. The crash of 2007-08 was essentially a rerun of 1990, with housing a major player each time, and it was worse in countries where housing debt had been allowed to run out of control. It may be nearly a century ago, but Keynes and Roosevelt worked out the need to put demand side first. David Redshaw Saltdean, East Sussex Even Jonathan Freedland ignores that Tony Blair failed to mend the roof while the sun was shining. Instead of modestly raising taxes, Gordon Brown resorted to Enron accounting, with private finance initiative (PFI) deals building schools and hospitals, without even bothering to stipulate that beneficial owners remained in the UK to pay tax on their profits. The Treasury naively assumed this in their value-for-money tests, while these PFI deals with ridiculously inflexible contracts have proved highly profitable. Many have become liabilities, as buildings are falling apart and public services face severe disruption as these contracts come to an end. And yet those who praise his analysis have not noticed that Blair is quite naked, coupled with his unhealthy desire for personal enrichment. Clearly Emperor Blair has no clothes. David Nowell East Barnet, London Substantial falls in pensioner and child poverty under New Labour were welcome, but largely achieved by very significant spending on benefits and tax credits. However, the incomes of poorer working-age adults without dependent children, the major group outside Labour’s priority demographic, changed very little over the period, so they fell behind the rest of the population and relative poverty levels rose. With Tony Blair’s governments, those at the top saw their incomes increase substantially so that, on most measures, overall inequality nudged up slightly. When inequality increased dramatically under Margaret Thatcher, so also did the percentage in Britain living in poverty. But when the global financial crisis hit, in 2007-08, the economy ceased to fire. Blair’s benefits and tax credits worked when the money was there, but New Labour hadn’t addressed the structural causes of poverty, one of which is wealth inequality. High and rising wealth inequality, more marked than income inequality, drives poverty and precarity for people at the bottom. Wes Streeting and Andy Burnham are right – to reduce poverty, address inequality. David Murray Wallington, London Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.