Labour needs to shine a light on Tory failures | Letters
Well done, Andy Beckett, for trying to refocus electoral debate towards the record of the incumbent party of government (Our focus on the future lets Johnson avoid the present, Journal, 30 November). After almost 10 years of Britain having a Tory prime minister and a Tory-led government, everything in the public domain is worse: the NHS, education, housing, public transport, social care, policing, inequality, poverty and, most shaming of all, child poverty.
Add to that their fouling of public discourse with the Brexit mess, which they have failed to clean up, and it is no wonder that Boris Johnson would wish to direct our gaze towards the sunlit uplands of the Tory-managed future and away from the past and present. While the Lib Dems might be shy about pointing the finger, given their complicity in the cruel failure of austerity, it is a mystery why the Labour party is not more vocal on the Tory record. The independent media, meanwhile, have an absolute duty not to neglect this important element of the pre-election debate.
Keith Howells
Morpeth, Northumberland