Digging Dugdale

HOW refreshing it was to read the views of Brian Hunter (Letters, 9 June) tracing the reality of how it was the Unionist parties’ failures that handed power to the SNP, instead of pouring blame on the Nationalists.

Not that Labour shows any signs of facing up to its role. Scottish Labour leadership candidate Kezia Dugdale continues to chunter out exactly the same script from both the referendum and general election hymn-sheets. My advice, and it is not meant to be helpful, is: keep it up Kezia!

Labour’s latest wheeze follows the John (Lord) Reid school of interview techniques: “If you are asking about the budget deficit, that did not cause the financial crash.” But nobody was asking that question or making that claim. However, Labour’s responsibility for the crash hinged upon its lax financial sector regulation and it cannot get away with claiming that the Tories’ policy was also lax – so it was really their fault.

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Labour denied it overspent. OK – if we take the original budget and add to it the £160 billion of borrowing, Labour did not overspend beyond that. The £30bn annual rate of borrowing matched its increasing public sector employees by one million, at a gross cost of £30,000 a head, so to claim it used the money to build hospitals and schools does not stand up – the capital costs would be on top of that, and be probably covered by private finance initiative/public private partnership long-term funding arrangements.

Douglas R Mayer

Thomson Crescent

Currie, Edinburgh

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