Blair began with plenty of policies

Simon Jenkins (Comment, September 5) writes that "Cameron should remember that Tony Blair came to power in 1997 without a single policy to his name". In fact, Labour made 229 manifesto commitments in 1997, according to the BBC analysis and research department, which carried out a neutral analysis to mark the government's fifth anniversary. Jenkins can argue that the policies were useless, or that Labour's 1997 victory had nothing to do with them, but to say that there were no policies goes beyond polemical exaggeration.

Given that the Conservative party's present approach is to publish commission reports stacked with recommendations which are neither party policy nor commitments for government, David Cameron seems to be following Simon Jenkins' advice more closely than your columnist appears to recognise.
Sunder Katwala
General secretary, Fabian Society

Simon Jenkins perpetuates one of the tired old myths about Thatcherism when he asserts that it "rescued the economy". If rescuing involves causing the worst recession since the 30s, with over 3 million unemployed, then his grasp of economics must be extremely weak. Thatcher had a slavish adherence to the subsequently discredited monetarist ideas of Friedman and Hayek, and almost wiped out large parts of the economy. Had it not been for the actions of a few crazy generals in Argentina she would have lost the 1983 election because of this. I would normally hesitate to support the views of a Tory leader, but David Cameron is right to ignore anything to do with the Thatcher "legacy".
Mike Painter

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