Labour needs to make its priorities clear to everyone | Letters
Martin Kettle quotes a former Whitehall mandarin saying that “the government has still not made clear what kind of Britain it is trying to create” (Rachel Reeves seized her moment – whatever the future brings, Labour’s economic course is now set, 12 June),He has a point, not wholly answered by Rachel Reeves,It’s the vision thing, and the ability to communicate it,It’s about describing what Labour is for, in a general sense, beyond a list of policy deliverables,Growth is important, but only as a means, not an end.
“Securonomics” is interesting, but has no public resonance.If people are now unsure what Labour stands for, it is because the task of ideological self-definition has been neglected.This is unlike 1997, which was preceded by a process of rethinking that produced New Labour and the “third way”.Something similar is needed now.There is a rich tradition of social democratic thinking in Britain to draw on, including RH Tawney’s argument for equal access to what he called “the means of civilisation” as the basis for a common culture.
Pragmatism is valuable, but it is not enough.An argument should be constructed around the three pillars of security, opportunity and community that would pull together all that the government is trying to do, and the kind of Britain it wants to create.And in a way that people might understand.Tony WrightLabour MP, 1992-2010 I agree with Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah that the focus on investment alone will not work (Has Rachel Reeves made the right choices? Our panel responds to the spending review, 11 June).New public investments are pointless if the operation and maintenance of what already exists isn’t adequately funded.
After years of austerity, the quickest and surest way to raise GDP and improve public services is to ensure that we realise the full potential of what we already have.The highest priority should be to relieve the financial pressure on those delivering services, especially our severely cash-strapped local authorities.This will deliver more broad-based and higher economic growth quickly, in contrast to the central allocation of investment funds to mega-projects that will take decades to deliver results.Entrepreneurs want to live and invest in safe areas with good health and education, well maintained roads and pleasant amenities.Properly funded local authorities can encourage higher private investment by delivering that.
Unfortunately, they are instead expected to implement an expensive and disruptive reorganisation and find the money to pay higher minimum wages and national insurance while receiving a settlement that implies a real-terms cut in funding,Labour needs to think again,Michael FosterChelmsford According to Rachel Reeves, the NHS has been “protected” and will receive “a 3% rise in its budget” (Spending review 2025: who are the winners and losers?, 11 June),But will it in practice? In a recent meeting with the chief executive of the Nottingham University hospitals trust, he told us that he had been instructed to make £97m of cuts in this financial year,This would mean leading to the loss of about 750 jobs and the closure of some wards.
Further, these massive cuts are the trust’s contribution to the even bigger ones imposed on the integrated care board for our county: a £280m reduction in the provision for all local health services.So, which is it really, protection and a 3% rise, or enormous cuts?Mike ScottChair, Nottingham & Notts Keep Our NHS Public 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.
UK government pledges further £590m for delayed Lower Thames Crossing
The government has pledged a further £590m towards Britain’s biggest road-building project, the controversial and long-delayed Lower Thames Crossing.In March, the transport secretary gave formal approval to the new road tunnel under the Thames joining Essex and Kent. The £9.2bn project will comprise more than 14 miles of roads including the 2.6-mile crossing near Thurrock, Essex
Thames Water must be held to account | Letters
So creditors wishing to take over Thames Water want the company and its senior management to be granted clemency from rules on sewage spills and environmental protection (Bidders demand Thames Water granted immunity over environmental crimes, 7 June). The rights of investors, it would seem, should prevail over the rights of communities to a clean environment.It is the failure of rigorously enforced regulation that led to the mismanagement of Thames Water, with loans being used to increase shareholder dividends and bloated bonuses for incompetent managers. In many countries the law can now be used to confiscate private assets gained from immoral activities, such as drug-running and prostitution. There is no reason why those who accrue wealth through the degradation of the natural environment should be treated any differently
AI could lead to more job cuts at BT, says chief executive
The chief executive of BT has said that advances in artificial intelligence could presage deeper jobs cuts at the FTSE 100 telecoms company, which has already outlined plans to shed up to 55,000 workers.Two years ago, the company said that between 40,000 and 55,000 jobs would be axed as it set out to become a “leaner” business by the end of the decade.However, in a weekend interview, its chief executive, Allison Kirkby, said the plan, which includes stripping out £3bn of costs, “did not reflect the full potential of AI”.“Depending on what we learn from AI … there may be an opportunity for BT to be even smaller by the end of the decade,” Kirkby said in an interview with the Financial Times.BT, which is the biggest broadband provider in the country, laid out plans in 2023 to cut the size of its workforce, including contractors, by 2030
Policymakers who think AI can help rescue flagging UK economy should take heed | Heather Stewart
From helping consultants diagnose cancer, to aiding teachers in drawing up lesson plans – and flooding social media with derivative slop – generative artificial intelligence is being adopted across the economy at breakneck speed.Yet a growing number of voices are starting to ask how much of an asset the technology can be to the UK’s sluggish economy. Not least because there is no escaping a persistent flaw: large language models (LLMs) remain prone to casually making things up.It’s a phenomenon known as “hallucination”. In a recent blogpost, the barrister Tahir Khan cited three cases in which lawyers had used large language models to formulate legal filings or arguments – only to find they slipped in fictitious supreme court cases, and made up regulations, or nonexistent laws
‘We’re being attacked all the time’: how UK banks stop hackers
It is every bank boss’s worst nightmare: a panicked phone call informs them a cyber-attack has crippled the IT system, rapidly unleashing chaos across the entire UK financial industry.As household names in other industries, including Marks & Spencer, grapple with the fallout from such hacks, banking executives will be acutely aware that, for them, the stakes are even higher.Within hours of a successful bank hack, millions of direct debits could fail, leaving rents, mortgages and wages unpaid. Online banking may be blocked, cash machine withdrawals denied, and commuters left in limbo as buses and petrol stations reject payments. News of the attack could spark panic, leading to a run on rival lenders, as customers pull money from their accounts amid fear the disruption could spread
Reeves braced for OBR forecasts to blow £20bn hole in tax and spending plans
Rachel Reeves is braced for revised forecasts by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) to blow a £20bn hole in her tax and spending plans before the autumn budget.Even without changing the totals the chancellor set out in her spending review on Wednesday, a weaker forecast from the the Treasury’s independent watchdog could force her to find significantly more money at the budget to meet her “non-negotiable” fiscal rules.Reeves has said repeatedly that flexing her fiscal rules – designed to provide certainty over UK public finances – is not an option even if the economic outlook deteriorates.At her spring statement, she left herself on course to meet those rules with less than £10bn of headroom to spare, on a total budget for day-to-day spending of more than £1.3tn
UK ‘woefully’ unprepared for Chinese and Russian undersea cable sabotage, says report
Labour needs to make its priorities clear to everyone | Letters
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