Reality check

Sir: While I share Mr Gove’s diagnosis of lodestar-less Starmerism (‘Cruel Labour’, 5 April), I cannot share the accompanying pearl-clutching.

For decades, politicians and voters have engaged in a mutually reinforcing entitlement spiral that took it as given that the civil service and welfare bill could expand ad infinitum, that working for a living was optional, and that our geopolitical enemies didn’t really mean what they said.