Unless Iain Duncan Smith can hold out, the poor and dispossessed, who’ve already seen their benefits reduced, cut altogether, or ‘inadvertently’ delayed for up to six months, are to be still further punished in the name of an economic disaster that was none of their making, all to satisfy the ideological whims of the political set on, apparently, both sides of the House. The more welfare is cut and the lower that wages are held, the slower will be economic recovery.

One has only to look at the effect on poor, beleaguered Greece, never mind our own much better but still laggard economy, to see the effects of severe austerity rapidly imposed.If it wasn’t for the poor and dispossessed the Labour party wouldn’t even exist. The magnitude of the party’s betrayal of the people it’s supposed to represent beggars belief.

Val Gaize

Studley