Steve Richards’ assertion that the centre ground of British politics is moving to the left (Opinion, 30 May) doesn’t stand up to much scrutiny. Labour’s current proposals don’t even include anything as radical as New Labour’s raid on energy companies’ windfall profits. Mrs May changes her mind more often than many people change their bed-sheets, so it’s impossible to say what her government will do. Both main parties insist on maintaining the fiction that we can have decent public services without paying for them, so neither has proposed increasing our most progressive and easy-to-collect tax.
When I graduated, standard-rate income tax was 33p in the pound; we didn’t starve, our roads weren’t riddled with potholes and NHS waiting lists weren’t creeping back up to 18 months. That dangerous lefty Mrs Thatcher kept the highest rate at 60p for most of her ghastly reign. But now, with rates of 20p and 45p in the pound, some of our country is enjoying private opulence, while the rest endures public squalor. Moving to the left? Dream on, Steve.
Brian Hughes
Cheltenham, Gloucestershire
• Steve Richards sets out a perceptive analysis of the current electoral spectrum, but its basis is flawed as it accepts unquestioningly the left-right axis. Liberals have always pointed out that public monopolies have similar effects on society as do private monopolies and that, in reality, the two extremes bend round to meet. A north-south axis is far more relevant, with authoritarianism and centralisation at one extreme – as practised by both major parties – and devolution and the diffusion of power at the other, as embraced by liberals. It’s time that the artificiality of left and right was acknowledged and rejected. Richards omits to note one obvious consequence of his analysis: that any party that proclaims itself a centre party is doomed to keep on cruising the electoral tides, forever at the mercy of where the other parties choose to anchor themselves.
Michael Meadowcroft
Leeds
• I notice that in the birthday announcements on Saturday (27 May), Tim Farron has a mention. Congratulations upon including his name somewhere in the newspaper. It, along with any decent election coverage of the Lib Dem campaign, has been noticeably scarce since the election was called. It is to be hoped that in the interests of fairness, this situation will be remedied.
Richard Harris
Watlington, Oxfordshire
• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com
• Read more Guardian letters – click here to visit gu.com/letters
