Treasury of virtues
Sir: I appreciate Sam Brittan's generous review of my book Accountable to None (Books, 18 November) but must correct the statement that the armed forces are an `astonishing omission' from the list of Tory nationalisations. I point out that they were already nationalised, though control over them was further centralised under the 1994 Treasury spending round. As for his remark that local government could never be a Toc- quevillian 'school for citizenship' in Britain, why not? It is in France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Denmark, Sweden, the USA, Canada, indeed in every other democracy in the world. Sam's beloved Treasury has many virtues, which I acknowledged, but love of democratic pluralism is not one of them. Simon Jenkins The Times,
1 Pennington Street, London El
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