9 OCTOBER 2004, Page 36

From Jon Livesey Sir: Oliver Letwin (Back off, Gordon', 2

October) is correct to identify the growth of the Civil Service and the increase in stealth taxes as a serious economic problem, but he underestimates the difficulty of dealing with it when he says, 'The answer is straightforward. By slimming down fat government, by cutting back on the bureaucracy, we can get the money to the frontline, where it belongs, and give taxpayers value for money.'

The reason it's not that simple is that the growth in the unproductive Civil Service has great electoral benefits for Labour.

Once upon a time, Old Labour could recruit working-class voters by creating unproductive jobs in nationalised industries, but that came to an end with Maggie. Denationalised steel found that it could produce as much steel with half as many workers, so steel jobs no longer generated votes for Labour.

New Labour is following the same votebuying policy, but today the jobs they are creating in the Civil Service benefit the natural bureaucrats: the half-educated, uncreative souls who don't have enough enterprise to make a career in commerce or industry, but have just enough to carry a clipboard and annoy their fellow citizens. Every one of these new civil servants knows that their pointless, cushy job would be at risk under the Tories, so for which party are they likely to vote?

There is a new social class of people who graduated from the new universities, but with low-quality degrees in 'soft' subjects. These people are too grand to dig ditches, and don't know enough to be able to work as professionals, so they depend on the Civil Service to employ them. Asking them to vote Tory is like asking the turkeys to vote for Christmas.

Jon Livesey California, USA