Labour is learning that tough decisions are never popular

Letters to the editor: our readers share their views. Please send your letters to letters@independent.co.uk

‘How fickle the majority of the population are to forget the mess the Tories left behind’ (PA Wire)

I see from a recent opinion poll that Labour have slipped to third place behind the Tories and Reform (“Fact check: Sir Keir Starmer’s low approval rating is not worst for a sitting PM” – Monday 2 December).

It comes after the prime minister introduced new pledges to try and boost Labour’s popularity with the nation.

How fickle the majority of the population are! They forget the mess the Tories left behind: the high debt, the fraudulent Covid contracts, the crumbling NHS... you could go on and on about the disastrous 14 years that the Conservatives were in power.

Our new government have been in power less than six months. Yes, some mistakes have been made – but Labour are fighting the good fight and making the difficult choices to offer a better future. That has got to be worth taking in the long-run.

Paul Atkins

Burntwood

Not off to a flying start

A second runway at Gatwick is the “obvious choice” for economic growth and will create 14,000 jobs, says Gatwick’s CEO Stewart Wingate (“14,000 jobs and £1 billion boost to the economy: Why Gatwick Airport needs a second runway” – Thursday 5 December) – to which I must disagree.

I’m an aerospace engineer and member of Safe Landing, a global community of aviation workers who act from within the sector to rapidly reduce the climate impact of air travel.

I attended the Gatwick Airport expansion planning inquiry earlier this year and gave evidence that opposed Gatwick Airport’s plans to increase passenger numbers from 47 million to 80 million a year.

The proposed expansion would make Gatwick almost as large as Heathrow and increase carbon emissions by 1 million tonnes a year, putting the UK government’s carbon budget delivery plan in even greater jeopardy. We think this won’t result in the positive jobs story being spun by the airport.

Any airport development needs to be fit for the genuinely sustainable future of air travel.

As somebody who has worked closely on this, I want to be 100 per cent clear that no aircraft technology or alternative jet fuel will be available at scale, in the time required, to rapidly decarbonise aviation. Our industry leaders have also admitted that “carbon offsetting” is fundamentally flawed and cannot deliver “carbon neutral” flying.

Our industry is currently underregulated and undertaxed. This situation cannot continue forever, and we’re likely to be hit by a sudden wall of far higher pricing to pay for alternative fuels and negative emissions in the near future. This will massively impact and reduce projections for air travel demand.

Regardless, we’ll also hit hard limits in terms of our legally binding carbon budget, with the UK government committing to include international aviation emissions from the mid-2030s.

This will mean enforced limits on flying fossil fuel-powered aircraft, as the infrastructure development at Gatwick is planned to cater for.

As a result, our group is worried that Gatwick Airport is building in overcapacity for a type of air travel, which is not fit for the future. This will lead to stranded assets when the projected demand fails to materialise, and will fail to deliver the expected return on investment.

We expect that aviation workers will bear the brunt of this, and we’ll see jobs gained become job losses.

We’re concerned that if Gatwick Airport goes ahead with its Northern Runway proposals, it will waste significant financial resources and time. It should instead hold off on expansion planning until there is more certainty regarding the future of aviation – and, in the meantime, direct efforts towards future-proofing the airport and associated jobs, for the necessary transformation of air travel.

Finlay Asher

Aerospace Engineer, Member of Safe Landing

A bad way to go

Was cracking jokes the right way for Justin Welby to take leave of his colleagues in the House of Lords?(“Senior clergy accuses outgoing Archbishop Justin Welby of ‘making light’ of abuse victims in speech” – Thursday 5 December).

As someone who myself is a clergyman of another denomination, I have to say “no”!

It seems that Welby and other top people in the church still do not get the full horror of what has been done by church leaders to those they are meant to care for.

It is disgraceful.

Andrew McLuskey

Ashford, Middlesex

No quick fix

The news recently surrounding Ozempic and other weight loss jabs has shocked me! (“Ozempic can supercharge weight loss and even defy ageing – but can it save the NHS?” – Monday 2 September).

I was raised to watch what I ate because eating unhealthy food meant I would put on weight very quickly. 

I’m now in my seventies – and I have always kept as fit as possible exercising and making the right choices about what I was consuming.

People nowadays seem to want an easy fix, without ever putting in the hard work to change their lifestyle habits.

Maybe an NHS push for dieting as a weight-loss option would be appreciated for those on a 12-year waiting list!

Di Markfield

Address Supplied

The icing on the cake

I agree with Graham Cooper (Letters: “NHS failures are nothing new” – Thursday 5 December) that the NHS has been in gradual decline for many years. At its outset it was, perhaps naively, assumed that if illnesses were treated, the population would become healthier and costs would not increase.

But to make the population healthy they must first be housed, fed and educated. Healthcare is the icing on the cake – and the cake has not been adequately baked.

Furthermore, the expectation of the health system is now vastly greater than it was in 1948. We are living longer and many more people are relying on NHS services.

I suspect that if we chose, we could probably devote the whole of our national wealth to healthcare, and it still wouldn’t be enough.

Choices will have to be made, but no politicians are brave enough to even say that – let alone to come out and suggest what the choices might be.

Susan Alexander

South Gloucestershire