‘A tighter fiscal policy and tighter monetary policy is not the right mix…we have yet to see the government put forward a joined-up policy to address the UK’s fundamental problems of a lack of investment and low productivity growth. Indeed, following the EU Referendum, of over six years ago, we have yet to see joined-up policy to address such issues. That will be the true test of the new PM and his Chancellor’.

David Owen, veteran city economist

Having done 600 interviews with asylum seekers, the reasons migrants are attracted to the UK are more complicated than the issue of ID cards. My research suggests the following are among the pull factors – presence of family (jobs with decent pay), English as as an international language, support of vibrant NGOs, religious freedom. The push factors include conflict, abuse of human rights, state corruption, poverty, religious persecution”.

Joseph Mullen of Eastbourne

*On 11 November, the Guardian reported that a head teacher at a West Midlands secondary school had some parents who couldn’t afford the £2.60 for lunches.

There was also a report that at a posh restaurant in Wales, a meal cost £410 per head (i.e. would cover over 150 lunches at the school).

*Meals in the Houses of Parliament are subsidised, yet the Tory Government resists extending the free school meals to cover many in poverty.

*In Liverpool,  at one “fun and food programme” organised during school holidays, the average number of children needing cooked lunches has increased from 20 to 50 a day, over the last 2 years.

‘The Conservative Party does not believe in the NHS, but dares not say so. By underinvesting, making the jobs  unrewarding and creating waiting lists, it hopes to encourage the public to turn to the private sector. The scandalous waste of money during the pandemic, and the party’s insistence on using the private sector for the failed test-trace system, which cost £37bn,  when the NHS could have done a better job for much less money, is indicative if it’s ideological approach’.

Wendy Savage,  President Keep Our NHS Public

‘The dirty secret of British politics is the cross-party consensus on macro economic management, productivity, the European Union and immigration. I chaired a meeting where Stephen Kinnock, Labour’s immigration spokesperson, laid out a plan for legal immigrarion that sounded more restrictive than the current system. Sir Keir Starmer is now seldom seen far from a Union Jack’.

David Goodhart