Growing pains

Sir: It was reassuring to learn that Wes Streeting is a reader of The Spectator and also shares the view of many that his government has ‘no growth strategy’ (‘To lead or not to lead’, 14 February). However, it is a shame that following the October 2024 Budget he did not take up the Spectator’s ‘Refer a Friend’ offer, as both Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves may have benefited from its early insights. Many of your writers and readers clearly predicted that the disastrous Budget would create wider problems for the UK, damaging growth, adding cost of living pressures, increasing company failures, raising unemployment and prompting further wealth flight. All this is now coming to pass and underpins the current gloom.

Against this backdrop, is it any wonder there are now desperate calls for change at the top? By contrast, if the economy had been flying high now, how different the story might have been for Sir Keir. That said, perhaps Streeting was canny in not wanting to share his weekly political digest.

Andrew Haynes

London SW6

Just deserts

Sir: Keir Starmer has been a disaster for this country and his downfall was correctly analysed by Tim Shipman (‘Keir and loathing’, 14 February). My concern with the Peter Mandelson scandal is that it may be the reason Starmer is replaced. If he were brought down under the justification of appointing Mandelson, his disastrous premiership would be overlooked more than it deserves to be. Enoch Powell said that every political career ends in failure – and it’s that last failure everyone remembers most. Take Margaret Thatcher and her poll tax, Boris Johnson and his cake, May with her tears. Let’s remember Starmer for being hopeless and the most unpopular PM in history, not because of his appointment of Mandelson as US ambassador.

Henry Bateson

Whittingham, Northumberland

Rich pickings

Sir: Rod Liddle (7 February) is surely right to attribute the Mandelson Misery to his indiscriminate fondness for the rich and the baubles they could put his way. As St Paul wrote to Timothy: the love of money is the root of all evil. But at least the fall of the Dark Prince has given us a new Latin tag: sic transit gloria Mandi.

John Hicks

Manchester

Wort für Wort

Sir: The British authorities in 1937 may well have described Michael Moritz’s refugee father as a ‘foreign alien’ (Books, 7 February) but as an Ausländer myself, I take a mild objection to your reviewer’s stating ‘Ausländer (meaning alien in German)’, with its rather pejorative connotation. In fact my Chambers dictionary defines alien as ‘belonging to something else, extraneous; repugnant; inconsistent…’. As the word literally translates as ‘out of the country’, I think ‘foreigner’ would be more polite and closer to the mark.

Laurence Whitfield

Starzach-Sulzau, Germany

Press ahead

Sir: Adrian Fogarty writes that lowering the voting age to 16 while banning access to social media for under-16s is a ‘curious prospect’ (Letters, 7 February). On the contrary, I would argue that banning access to social media and encouraging teens to read, say, a selection from The Spectator, New Statesman, the Times and the Guardian, might equip them better to engage with issues and listen to rational debate than the echo chambers and worm holes that social media leads them into.

Paul Connor

Kingsbridge, Devon

Better together

Sir: Virginia McGough’s letter about assisted dying (Letters, 14 February) contains much with which most Christians would agree. She rightly commends the work of Dame Cicely Saunders in developing the care which hospices provide to the dying. It pains me however to have to point out that Dame Cicely was an Anglican. It is true that she had worked at St Joseph’s in Hackney, a Catholic hospice, before developing her own hospice, and received an award from the Pope as well as the Archbishop of Canterbury.

I write rather to say that faced with a society which seems to be moving away from the ministry of Jesus Christ, we Christians should stand together as all equally flawed disciples. The era of scoring points off each other is surely over. This is perhaps something the secular world is demanding of us.

What was so impressive about Dame Cicely was her deeply felt Christian understanding which led her into this work. It matters not whether she was Roman Catholic or Anglican.

The Revd Canon Tim Ollier

Darlington, Co. Durham

Todgers and tea towels

Sir: Nicky Haslam’s Diary (14 February) was a hoot about language education and the ‘Can I do you now, Sir?’ pragmatism of the lower orders he refers to. His irreverence towards the elite, while being in their midst, is powerfully jester-like for the modern day. I never expected ‘todger’, Cleo Rocos’s assets or Mandelson’s Speedos to feature in the same train of thought as ‘milk in first’ protocol and filling pot holes.

This is precisely the diversity of thought we all demand. The mind of an eclectic designer with no filter. Politics awaits his intellect: more importantly, what can he do with the Palace of Westminster’s refit?

W. McCall

Stirlingshire

Dress code

Sir: I enjoyed Damian Thompson’s review of the Ann Lee biopic, and its reminder that Hollywood often confuses doctrinal matters as well as clerical attire (Arts, 14 February). So do low-church and high-church clergy in the Church of England. The late great clergyman David Watson, on the lower end of the candle, offered to lead the service at his neighbouring ‘high’ parish while the priest was on holiday. Not wanting to offend, he put on everything he could find in the vestry and turned to the verger for his approval who intoned, ‘Father doesn’t usually wear the bookmark.

The Revd Alistair Tresidder

Vicar, St Luke’s Hampstead

Grist to the mill

Sir: Charles Moore’s favourable comments on the Turner and Constable exhibition at the Tate has reinforced my decision to visit it (Notes, 14 February). For many years I took my year 5 class for a week’s field studies to Flatford Mill. It was thrilling for both staff and ten-year-olds to live in Willy Lott’s house and explore the countryside painted by Constable.

Mary Moore

Croydon

Double down

Sir: I was delighted to see Max Weston win our first gold medal at the Winter Olympics, in the men’s skeleton. At least there is one thing in this country that we are excelling at – going downhill at great speed.

Sophie Heath

Barnes, London SW13

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