Letter: Our national wealth was squandered
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Your support makes all the difference.Sir: There is a simple question to put to the Conservative Party before the election: where has all the money gone?
No government has had more income than the Conservatives in the past 18 years: revenues from North Sea oil; proceeds of sales of national assets; indirect taxes increased more than any reduction in direct taxes; an alarming increase in the national debt. All this during a period when cuts in expenditure are a government boast.
So where have they spent so much money? They claim to be the party of thrift and careful husbandry of public finances. In reality they have squandered our national wealth on the costs of the unemployment and social dislocation created by their policies, wasting a unique opportunity to rebuild public services and to invest for the future.
All this in pursuit of a simplistic theory of economics which failed despite enthusiastic application in the most favourable circumstances. Let Thatcherite monetarism be consigned to the wilderness with Marxism, fascism, and all the other -isms which have caused such distress in this century, and let its proponents be removed from any further conduct of the nation's affairs.
ALAN KNELL
Leamington Spa, Warwickshire
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