This budget could be ‘Fiscal Phil’ Hammond’s big opportunity | Letters

Phillip Hammond has been getting advice on this week’s budget from numerous commentators, such as Matthew d’Ancona (Hammond has gimmicks. What he needs is humility, 20 October). Can I suggest that even at this late moment there is a book that the chancellor should consult: Benjamin Disraeli’s Sybil. Although today’s circumstances differ from 1845, the essentials are not too different. Then there was a numerous, discontented working class struggling to survive on low wages and living in poor housing; today the numerous members of the precariat and the “just managing” suffer the same plight. Disraeli realised that this discontented group could be won to the Tory cause.

The policies of one nation Toryism created the working-class Tory, who enabled the Conservatives to become the natural party of government. While the rightwing populism of Brexit has won many working-class voters to the Tory cause, once the negative impact of Brexit hits the country, this support could evaporate. If Hammond wants to lead the Conservative party he must produce a radical Disraeli-like budget that will appeal to the losers in society. Disraeli was able to turn a party dominated by politicians far more reactionary than Jacob Rees-Mogg into a conservative party imbued with a sense of duty and care towards the poorest in society.
Derrick Joad
Leeds

• Re the letter from Joseph Stiglitz and others (The chancellor must end austerity now, 20 November), the chancellor should also note that controlled rage is the only rational response to the Paradise Papers’ revelations that billions of pounds are shipped out of the UK tax free to tax havens at the same time that councils are enforcing council tax arrears, plus court costs and bailiff fees, against the lowest UK incomes. That happens on top of rent arrears, the dire increases in the cost of living and family and individual insolvency. For weeks, sometimes months, those households have no income to pay the tax due to the benefits sanction, zero-hours contracts and universal credit. Their housing benefit has been cut by the overall benefit cap, by the bedroom tax and by the local housing allowance, while rents increase. The council tax enforcement army takes no prisoners, while the elite enjoy the unearned and untaxed huge increase in the value of their UK land, their tax-free yachts and their private aircraft.
Rev Paul Nicolson
Taxpayers Against Poverty

• Part of the government’s apparent problem in allowing councils to borrow in order to build council housing (Fiscal Phil’s get out of jail free card: sort out housing, 20 November) is the treatment of such expenditure as merely increasing debt. In fact, it creates assets, even if these can be sold at a discount under right to buy.

The other part is its ideological objection to council housing in the first place. Both stances have to be abandoned if the housing crisis is to be tackled.

I look back to 1967, the year in which I was first elected as a councillor in Newcastle, when the city built 3,000 council houses.
Jeremy Beecham
Labour, House of Lords

• In the past, housing benefit bought more social housing. Now it goes into landlords’ pockets. Time now to build future-proof social housing and use the rents to recreate the virtuous cycle.

At the moment, we have a system by which the government commands and “bribes” local councils to build. This leads to councils taking the line of least resistance by using green fields and big property companies. Here in High Peak a development of 107 houses on beautiful green fields rewards the council with almost £500,000 of government money. The town is already gridlocked; primary schools suffer increased pollution; and the amenity loss is huge (ancient trees, bats, owls, insects, deer etc). The houses are mostly three-to-four bedroom, of the type that maximise developers’ profit, with a few “affordable” homes tagged on. The houses are not Passivhaus. So, more houses are built, but they leave a toxic legacy.

Can we build housing that meets the current needs of local communities and does not jeopardise the future?
Lorrie Marchington
Whaley Bridge, High Peak, Derbyshire

• “Nobody has a shorthand typist any more,” the chancellor says (Hammond ‘detached from reality’ over no unemployed gaffe, 20 November). Note the “has”, not “is”. This is very revealing about where Philip Hammond sees his place in the world. It reminds me of the Lady Chatterley’s Lover trial: “Is it a book that you would even wish your wife or your servants to read?”
Andrea Royce
Ruddington, Nottinghamshire

• Philip Hammond correctly observed that “20 years ago we were worried about what would happen to a million shorthand typists in Britain as the personal computer took over”. He need go no further than Zimbabwe to see how an ambitious and flexible typist can demonstrate those splendid Tory virtues, “better themselves” and give the best possible start to their children. You’re an example to us all, Grace Mugabe!
Bill Bradbury
Bolton, Greater Manchester