David Cameron’s article (Red lights are flashing on the world economy, 17 November) starts: “Six years on from the financial crash that brought the world to its knees … ” I don’t normally welcome people of Cameron’s persuasion writing for the Guardian but, if it has finally persuaded him that the Labour government wasn’t to blame for the crash, perhaps readers can look forward to articles indicating Damascene conversions from George Osborne, Danny Alexander et al, who rarely miss an opportunity to prattle on about the “mess that Labour left us”.
Ken Vines
Yelverton, Devon
• So David Cameron is warning about the world economy. One hopes he and Osborne will not use this as an excuse for insufficient progress on paying down the deficit despite all the suffering their austerity measures have caused. Just as the Brown government faced financial meltdown, Cameron’s government may now face events beyond its control: they expected Labour to apologise for events not of its making so I am hopeful the Conservatives will be apologising for continued problems. I’m also hoping that they may learn from Labour that one does not just talk about being all in this together, but actually takes action to reduce inequality.
I am not a Labour supporter but have been amazed at how the party has been prepared to let the Conservatives blame it for the economic crisis, which was international and which it handled better than most other governments. If there was any blame specific to the UK it goes back to Margaret Thatcher and her deregulation of the banks and other financial institutions.
Eunice Hinds
Bath
• At last, Dave Cameron has admitted that austerity is a failure. The austerity measures implemented across Europe and the globe have failed. The only economies that are succeeding globally are those that did not implement the “slash and burn” policies that we now see having a devastating effect. Austerity measures have devastated society and communities across the UK. Now a report by the London School of Economics and the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex has shown the rich are getting richer and the poor poorer. Austerity is not working, we need a change.
Duncan Anderson
Immingham, Lincolnshire
• David Cameron wants to put rocket boosters behind the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). In doing this he is following the advice of the then governor of the Deutsche Bundesbank, who in 1998 praised governments for preferring “the permanent plebiscite of the global markets” to “the plebiscite of the ballot box”. We seem to be leaving democracy floundering. Karl Popper in The Open Society and Its Enemies wrote: “If we wish freedom to be safeguarded, then we must demand that the policy of unlimited economic freedom be replaced by the planned economic intervention of the state. We must demand that unrestrained capitalism give way to economic interventionism.” Perhaps the rocket boosters should be placed behind Cameron.
Alec Murdoch
Edinburgh
• When David Cameron warns of a second global crash, what he really means is that we haven’t fixed the causes of the first one. The banks are still playing double or quits with international financial flows. The wealthy are still removing vast sums from national economies and from consumer markets. Bleeding chunks of the general population have no viable work environment. Consumption is still dependent on low-wage, outsourced exploitation. TTIP demonstrates Cameron is as gullible as was Gordon Brown. Our political leaders sit around larger and larger tables, making promises they have no idea how to keep. In a era of mass communication, established politicians get so much information every day they cannot get their heads around any of it: so ideology becomes a life raft. Technology is making “monkey see, monkey do” of all of us.
Martin London
Henllan, Denbighshire
• It’s a bit rich that Cameron is talking about red lights flashing over the economy when world experts have been warning for at least the last four years that the policies of his chancellor and those of the same political persuasion as our PM throughout the world would lead to just this.
Peter Collins
Bromley, Kent
• The warning lights that have flashed at David Cameron suggest he is playing Hilaire Belloc’s 1907 strategy from Cautionary Tales for Children: “Always keep a hold of Nurse, / For fear of meeting something worse”. It worked for Margaret Thatcher but is the present PM such good casting?
Iain Mackintosh
London
• No wonder the red lights are flashing. If we go into economic meltdown, how will all those hedge funds be able to finance his election campaign?
Brian Morris
Wakefield
