What's Wrong with the Tories?
SIR,-1 suggest that the final proposition in your article 'What's Wrong with the Tories?' ought not to be confined to this context. All people as at present constituted act, and in the main can only act, in con- formity with their economic environment. Economic environment is established by the Government. Hence the third part of your proposition that 'anything that goes wrong is the fault of damn fool politicians,' in the economic field is basically true.
Yet in the present difficult economic position we have ministers and their economic advisers blaming everyone except themselves. Wage-earners are blamed for wage demands which are the direct result of shortage of labour. Trade union officials are blamed for doing their proper job in obtaining the market price of labour. Suppliers of capital are blamed for requiring interest rates appropriate to conditions of shortage of capital. Industrialists are blamed for not
increasing capital expenditure to raise production and productivity when their available resources have been diminished by government action and at the same time are blamed for not lowering prices and profits, when all these things are together impossible or inconsistent one with another in the present economic enviroment.
Yet the conditions of shortage of labour, inflated consumer demand and shortage of capital have all been created by the economic policies of the Govern- ment. What more proof do we need of your proposi- tion in this wider sense? These policies appear to my simple mind to be insane. Causes, not symptoms, require treatment.
A. M. BURDON-COOPER
Middle Cave House, Malton, Yorkshire
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