How apt that a biography of Attlee won the Orwell prize for political writing as art (Tribute to NHS founder Clement Attlee wins Orwell prize, 16 June). Such reminders of Labour’s totemic achievements are essential in challenging Tory doublethink. Indeed even your leader this week (May’s coalition of chaos stumbles through another day, 14 June) suggested that “in rhetorical terms, austerity has been over for a year”. Beware this Tory doublethink. Austerity is alive and kicking, harming national growth and living standards, and spreading poverty. It has fed rapacious cost-cutting, with devastating consequences – which fill your pages this week. The architect of this austerity, George Osborne, now London Evening Standard editor, suggests the misery should continue. He is profoundly wrong. More doublethink, I fear.
In any democracy, if you impoverish the nation, you will lose the right to govern. But for this to work, we must champion the George Orwell of truth and challenge the George Osborne of austerity. The Tories’ ideology that “ignorance is strength” is an ever present danger for which they should pay the ultimate electoral price.
Nick Mayer
Southampton
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