• I SUGGEST that Martin Plaut begins his political education by buying a dictionary and looking up the definition of words like socialism, (Labour has embarked on socialist policies, January 2).

The yet undelivered measures he lists represent tiny adjustments to the government’s budget using money saved by denying many working women a promised full state pension, failing to properly support poor families with more than two children, and forcing millions of poor pensioners to choose between going without food or heating. There is nothing socialist about any of this.

Mr Plaut should learn that taking money from billionaires to fund his favoured party, cosying up to big business and billionaire-owned newspapers and failing to close tax loopholes are not socialist policies.

Ah, but then, poor pensioners can’t afford the designer clothes, football tickets and luxury foreign “fact-finding” trips that ministers believe their status entitles
them to.

PETER ROBBINS, NW5